Week Two

Part 2: Restless wilderness

Conversation Starter

What does the word ‘wilderness’ mean to you?

Read Deuteronomy 26: 1-11

When you come back from time spent in the wilderness (either a literal wilderness or a metaphorical one) how do you feel? What are your priorities? How do you tune back in?

Read Luke 4: 1-4

Jesus is famished and the devil would have him chewing rocks…

But why doesn’t Jesus set up a bakery that turns rubble into bread? It could provide good jobs in the local community. Why doesn’t he turn a local spring into ‘wine on tap’ that he could then bottle and sell as a culturally valuable and sustainable export? He could then use the profits to reinvest in the plight of the needy. Why didn’t Jesus go into ethical business? Or become an inventor? Or a politician? Or set up a charity? Or found a hospital?

Why does Jesus spend most of his short life in his human form in relative anonymity, quietly living alongside us doing none of the above?

Read 1 Kings 19: 1-15

Sometimes when we are in times of wilderness we understandably look for God in the storms, in the tremors, in the blazes. 

And sometimes God finds us in the silence.

What is your relationship with silence? Do you ever spend time simply in silence with God? How does God use silence to speak to us?