In the desert (3)

"a voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'" (Mark 1:3)

The desert is not a romantic place. There are no TV, Karoake room and tennis court. There is nothing for us to entertain ourselves. It is not the place to have an alumni reunion, a mutual saving club and nor to have date with lovers. It seems a place far from enjoying life.

A spiritual desert also is never joyful place. There is no revival service where a talkative revivalist makes audiences to burst into a roar of laughter. There is no a union meeting of choir. Nor is elder raising ceremony and church offering ceremony. Nor is an open worship service, worship and praise and praying together with one voice. Is there any Christian who looks for a spiritual desert where no religious entrainment?

The answer for the critical reason that we avoid a spiritual desert is we do not satisfy with God only. So we hate to go to the desert where we have to concentrate on God only and secure the depth of life only in the relationship with God. We cannot bear even in a single day in such place. If we are required to stay in a month then we may renounce Christianity itself. In a certain point, the desert is a way of self-destruction for those who are not ready spiritually. Pannenberg said in his sermon, “The way to God’s victory’ explained the desert in Isaiah like the follows connected with a nihilism that Niche told.

Today the word ‘desert’ in our modern consciousness becomes the image of nihilism after Niche mentioning of “The desert grows: Cursed to those who hide the desert” in his book ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’. We cannot lightly escape without taking any step from such spiritual desert of nihilism. There should be God’s calling that Israel people had experienced in Egypt. Israel people cross over the desert following the Lord who was calling them. We have to here a calling, the very thing the prophet of today’s content realized, to prepare the way of the Lord to enable to cross over the desert. Such calling helps us enable to hold a clear direction of the way to cross over the desert. It is easy to lose its direction in the desert generally. In the case of hearing such God’s calling to indicate the way in the desert and so in case of having such particular self-effacing experience it can be a background to point out God’s is sincere.

I wonder is there such clear direction of way in the desert of nihilism. In all the territory of nihilism is the loss of sense of direction predominantly working? In fact many people appeared in history and called many people. However, they were often proved as a sort of mirage that destroyed their followers who were wondering in the desert. They also made the escaping way of their followers unknown. We all knows, either the eastern or the western, magic image which appeared in the desert of nihilism. Not only a personal but the entire nations are going to the way of destruction through such mirage. (Pannenberg, translated by Dr. Jung Yongsup, Present God, p.74)

Today most of us are living in the city quite different from the desert. Though some are living in the country the form of real life is not much different from the city. Religious life also inclines to the joy of city life style which is totally different from the desert. However, it is very strange that everything seems splendid, eventful and pensionable but the nihilism of the desert, as Niche pointed out, rules over the moderns and the modern Christians. Some of you may think your religious life is filled with a spiritual energy. If it is so practically then it is fine. If you deal with your church with such spiritual it is great good fortune. I hope such spirituality may affluent continuously.

However, if your spiritual is getting dull though you have frequent religious meeting in the church which decorated with the highest class interior then you have to think of the spiritual desert once more. The desert is that you have to meet God alone or fact to the essence of life. The final desert may come with the death but we need such practice in our usual life before the angel of death comes to call us. The practice is to meet the absolute power alone.