'This is a wilderness road.
'In the Acts of the Apostles, Philip is called by God to make a journey. There’s no obvious reason to make it, so as the story begins the storyteller drops in a little aside: ‘This is a wilderness road’. Modern translations often put the words into brackets on their own, to make it clear that it’s an extra, a ‘nothing to see here’ detail.
But of course the effect is quite the opposite. The words stand out, take hold of the imagination. Philip walked a wilderness road, and didn’t know why. God called him to a desolate place for an inscrutable reason. What did he think as he walked it? Was he fearful? Did he question his calling? Did it seem pointless? Dangerous? Did he continue hopeful in spite of everything?
As this Lent approaches, amid the sins, confusions, tensions, and tragedies of our times within and without the Church, these words echo across the days for me. This is a wilderness road. For Jesus, the confirmation of his calling led straight to the barrenness of wilderness and the agony, hunger and thirst of temptation. The word itself holds meanings of abandonment by God in tension with divine encounter, barren desert landscape in tension with a place of natural, unallocated resource, wild uncultivated pastureland. A wilderness road is a road into what is not yet known or owned or understood: God’s place, not a place where human wisdom has much use or power. You leave your certainties behind there. Is that pointless? Dangerous? Should you continue hopeful in spite of everything?
This is a wilderness road. Like contemplative prayer, the wilderness road invites a journey on which you learn to expect nothing. A lot of nothing. If we have no handle on the future, or on the meanings of present wraths and sorrows, we are in a place where – just perhaps – God may at last contrive to be heard.
This is a wilderness road.'
Jessica's reflection was featured in We Pray, quarterly prayer diary that also features news and stories from across the Diocese of Chelmsford. You can read the full publication online here, chelmsford.anglican.org/publications/wepray