Article July 6, 1992 Issue

A new view of the wilderness

God's love and unopposable power are always present to be discerned and proved.

Louis Abrahams

In many places throughout the world today, wilderness areas are being registered as protected national parks. Some of these have amenities to enable people to explore the wonders of their natural environment. Travelers often go to these parks for a break in order to escape from overcrowded cities or from stress. This certainly differs from the time when a wilderness was thought of only as an unfriendly, perhaps dangerous place. It is encouraging to see this different view of a wilderness, to see areas of natural wonder and beauty being cherished rather than feared and avoided.

There's another kind of wilderness, though, that's not at all pleasant. Some feel they're in the middle of it no matter where they happen to be. It's a mental wilderness of isolation, bewilderment, fear. Is there a way out? Yes, there is. It's found through a perception that God is the actual source of man's life, the only creator; that, as omnipresent Love, He cares for man's every need. When we glimpse the spiritual fact that divine Love is a powerful, living presence, forever providing for its image, man, fears begin to recede and then dissolve.

To attain this new view of ourselves as His image, therefore wholly spiritual, free from fear, does require effort on our part. But as we determine to step out of our mental wilderness and make progress Spiritward, we learn many helpful lessons. Perhaps the most important is that the whole unhappy episode has indeed been mental, as much as it may have seemed otherwise. We realize, too, that it is always up to us to assess what is really taking place as our experience. We can either take things at face value or look more deeply to acknowledge God's loving care, whether circumstances appear bright or gloomy. Recognizing God's guiding love, and eliminating from thought anything that would negate our appreciation of it, we start to free ourselves from that narrow outlook which would keep us clinging to a sense of separation from Him. We're able to feel something of our spiritual unity with God as His very image, as His spiritual likeness. We realize that within God's allness there is no tinge of depression or fearful doubt.

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