It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.
—Eugene H. Peterson
I live in Minnesota where we joke that there are only two seasons: winter and road construction.
If you mention this joke to someone, it will receive a hearty groan because we’ve all heard it a thousand times. Every moment without snow, ice, and frigid temperatures is full of road construction. Obviously, there are only so many months where the climate makes it reasonable to get this type of outside work done. But road construction is so prevalent in Minnesota because the ice and the snow cause so much damage to the roads themselves. The snow falls, melts, freezes, melts, freezes, more snow falls, it melts, freezes, and so on. Every time the snow melts, it seeps into the cracks, large or small, in the road.
When water freezes it expands by about 9 percent, and this expansion has enough force to break concrete and asphalt. This creates potholes and cracks in the road that have been known to cause hubcaps to go flying. Water is actually unique. Most liquids contract when they freeze because the molecules are more tightly packed. The way that hydrogen bonds with oxygen creates the opposite effect, and thus water expands slowly in the freezing process.
Humans are like water. I don’t mean literally, although Bill Nye the Science Guy would be quick to remind us that the average adult male is 60 percent water. What I mean is that some seasons in our lives cause us to expand. It can happen slowly over time. Sometimes we don’t notice it happening. What we do notice is the potholes and cracks in our lives where a nice clear path used to be. We begin to experience a bumpy ride because our expansion has literally broken through what seemed so solid.
You can see how easily this expansion can be mistaken for something negative. But what you are experiencing is a form of growth. We tend to think of growth as linear, moving forward on a scale or higher up on the ladder of achievement. While this may be true when it comes to growth in education or business, when it comes to spiritual growth, we expand.
In the narrative of Scripture, the wilderness is an expansion space. In one of the first wilderness stories in Scripture, Moses leads the Hebrew people out of Egypt. The Hebrews used the word Mizraim as the common name for Egypt, which means “the narrow place.” God was leading them out of the narrow place. While they were enslaved by the Egyptians, the Hebrews grew in number; they expanded. The narrow place was too tight for them to continue to survive.
Pharaoh had a different plan to deal with the expansion of the Hebrew people: kill the baby boys. He figured that would help curb the population growth. If the Hebrews expand too much, they would become a threat.
God’s response to the expansion of the Hebrew people was to help them pass through the Red Sea by parting the waters. This led them into the wilderness, with the goal of reaching the promised land on the other side. They would encounter more drama and trauma on the way to that land, but Exodus adamantly reinforces that God was with them every moment they were in the wilderness. Even so, the people doubted God constantly. They even asked if they could return to Egypt, to the narrow place. That’s how frustrating the wilderness can be—it causes you to want to shove your expanded self back into something that doesn’t fit anymore. Like the coat your parents tried to squeeze you into to save money even after you’d outgrown it.
When they arrived at the promised land, it was time to live up to their name once again. This time the water from the Jordan River stopped flowing from upstream, and the Hebrews were able to walk through the river bed to the other side and begin the next stage in their life with God.
The exodus narrative lays out the following pattern for us: expansion in the narrow place, passing through into the wilderness, doubting God in the wilderness, asking God if you can go back to the narrow place, finally passing through to the next destination, and realizing that new destination isn’t a finish line but the start of a new chapter.
We are not likely to experience a journey like this literally, but most of us will experience it spiritually. We find ourselves in narrow places all the time. It might be a relationship, a job, or a faith community. As we begin to expand, we feel the strain until the expansion cracks the asphalt like ice in a pothole or busts the seams like the jacket that was too tight. When we find ourselves in narrow places, it’s likely we will have to pass through. You don’t always have a clear direction, but you can’t stay here. And as you pass through you find yourself in the wilderness.
The rest of this book is about how to move through the wilderness, or break through the wall, whichever metaphor feels like it fits. You have expanded as a person; you are asking questions you never thought you would ask. The pavement that once seemed solid is cracked and broken. When you look back at the path behind you, the Red Sea has closed again so that you can’t go back. In the rest of these pages, we are going to name some of the obstacles that prevent us from moving from wandering to wondering, confusion to reflection, skepticism to action, certainty to conviction.
One of my hobbies is to read stories and listen to podcasts about entrepreneurs. I’m fascinated by stories of beginnings. In nearly every story of someone starting something awesome, they describe a moment where they came to a crossroads. Jim Koch, the cofounder of Boston Beer Company, producers of Samuel Adams beer, says, “There are things in life that are scary, but not dangerous, but we’re scared of them. And then there are things that are dangerous, but not scary. And those are the real problem. Those are the issue.”[1] Koch came to a crossroads in his life where he knew that if moved forward, it would be scary because he would be stepping deeper into uncertainty. But if he held back it would be dangerous because it would be the beginning of the end of a dream. If he hadn’t moved forward, even though he was scared, he never would have built a company that has become so successful.
If you are expanding spiritually, there is a whole wilderness of uncertainty ahead of you. It’s no doubt scary to stay curious because asking questions is risky when we don’t know where the answers will lead us. Or we might wonder if we will be able to find any answers at all! Even though moving into the great unknown is scary (we will talk about confronting fear in chapter 13), staying where you are is dangerous. Just like it was dangerous for the Hebrews to stay in Egypt. Moving forward doesn’t mean that there is nothing to fear, but staying where you are will be the beginning of the end of a faith you can actually live with. It’s not a good expansion plan to stay where you are at. You need to pass through.
Imagine that you are in a beautiful place with small hills and valleys. Your friend suggested this particular location because there is a beautiful spring-fed pond surrounded by willow trees and amazing wildlife. Hoping to find the perfect place to relax, you are disappointed to arrive and see no pond, no willow trees, and no wildlife as far as your eyes can see.
“Oh well,” you think to yourself, “my friend must have been mistaken. I see hills and valleys and some huge pine trees, but no pond.” Hanging your head in disappointment, you go back to the car wondering if you can make it home in time to binge the new season of your favorite show on Netflix before you have to be ready for work in the morning.
If you trusted your friend, you would have assumed that the pond was there and that you had to search a bit in order to discover it. You may have to walk through the forest of pines or climb a few of those hills in order to find the willow trees and wildlife your friend described. Just because you don’t see it from the parking lot doesn’t mean it’s not there. When we move, our vantage point changes. As we put one foot in front of the other, we see things that we couldn’t see before.
Sure enough, even though you are a bit sweaty and tired from the hike, you come around a bend and there it is! Beautiful, just as your friend has described it. The stream flowing into the pond is magical, with reeds swaying in its banks. Sitting down to rest under the tree feels even better because of the work you put in to arrive there.
René Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” Not to disagree with a seventeenth-century philosopher, but I want to take it a bit further. I would like to say, “I move, therefore I am.”
Movement is a sign of life. It means we are still breathing, still alive, still able to see new perspectives and vantage points.
When we feel stuck, it may mean we need some time to rest, think, or pray, but first, we must remember to move! Through moving, we collect experiences we can then process at the edge of the pond. Moving opens us up to other possibilities we could not see before. We may get curious, wonder where that little creek leads, and decide to follow it upstream. We may imagine other potentials that cause us to question if there could be more. Maybe this stream runs into a larger body of water or becomes a waterfall!
So what do we do when faced with this type of intersection in our lives? How do we pass through in the midst of uncertainty?
We need to move in order to pass through the wilderness or wall. Taking actions that help our minds and hearts open up can bring new perspectives on what direction we need to take. The best way to begin to take action to expand your perspective is through what I like to call experiments.
Now, I’m not talking about the kind of experiments you did in high-school chemistry. However, let’s borrow some of the scientific process here. Any good experiment has a few components that are crucial.
First, you have a question you want to answer.
Second, you design a process you think could help you answer the question.
Third, you follow those steps intentionally.
Finally, you review your results to see what you have learned.
This is exactly what I am proposing you do when it comes to God, spirituality, and the questions you’re facing. The first step would be to identify the question you’re asking. Here are some that I hear often from people I’ve talked with:
Let’s use that last question as an example. It’s the kind that typically opens up even deeper questions. I find this to be the reason some people avoid moving into their questions. They don’t want to pull on the thread, knowing it will lead to more and more difficult questions they feel ill equipped to answer. I urge you to consider how more questions, although daunting, can actually be a really good, and exciting, part of life.
So, let’s think about what types of experiments you could try in order to move further down the path toward discovery.
You could find a book or two on the subject of science and faith—or even get a couple other people to read together and discuss for the sake of greater discovery. You could find someone in your wider network you think is a brilliant scientist who is also a Christian and see how they answer this question. You could also do this with an atheist or someone with another worldview. It wouldn’t be too difficult to spend some time watching a documentary or experiencing nature—opening yourself up spiritually in order to see if God impresses something upon your mind or heart.
As you can see, it isn’t difficult to come up with a list of ways to explore the question. Unfortunately, I find people typically stop before taking any action. They may come up with a question, and in some cases, even a list of potential action steps, but they never start the actual experiment. If they do begin the experiment, there are usually a few other roadblocks to discovery.
If your process is haphazard and not very clear from the beginning, you’re going to run into problems. Experiments that are unorganized or poorly conducted don’t lend themselves to a reliable data set. Ask any chemistry teacher. If your process is sloppy, more than likely your results will be as well. This leads to a distrust of your results—in this case, your learnings.
Another reality that holds us back from discovery is that we often skip the final step: reviewing your results to see what you have learned.
The process of review needs to be intentional and communal. In chemistry, reports are written on the results of the experiment so that the greater scientific community can learn from the experiment and its findings can be passed on for others to build upon. Others will try to replicate the experiment to confirm the findings or adjust it to learn more. Similarly, the scientific and academic communities do not take a report seriously if it’s not peer reviewed. A peer-reviewed report provides the deepest learning, for its results have been discovered not only by experimenter(s) but also by others trusted within the community.
Studies have shown that the only way that people truly make it through the wall is with the help of “process-oriented relationships.” This can be with a pastor or mentor, a therapist or counselor, a small group from your church or community, or a sibling, spouse, friend, or prayer partner. These kinds of relationships can happen in a variety of ways, but to get through the wall, they must happen.
Process-oriented relationships are more than just friends hanging out or swapping stories about the woes of raising toddlers or the stress of grad school. While it’s great to have those relationships, process-oriented relationships are more intentional. It may mean having an awkward conversation with a friend in which you express that you’re hoping you can both engage in an intentional process of discovery together. Or it may mean giving some sort of group a try even though you are hesitant. But it’s worth it. You need to be able to answer this question: Who are your people for this journey?
To explore some of life’s deepest questions you will need to try many experiments to find direction. However, nearly all experiments, if following a process, will move you. They will help you get unstuck. Rarely do one or two experiments end with a big reveal, but even the small things learned along the way matter and take us deeper. Experiments take effort, but the wonder they can open up in our lives about who Jesus is, who we are, and why we exist can change everything.
Here are examples of some ways you can approach your experiments based on the example questions I gave above.
You could:
These experiments will not give you a pat answer to your question (you’re not looking for pat answers anyway), but they can take you to a whole new world of understanding.
You could:
You could:
You could try a series of experiments where you test out new spiritual practices.
I have no idea what direction you will be going by the end of these experiments. But I do know that you would not be sitting still, wandering, or stuck. You’ll be moving in a new direction, and that is a great place to start.
Each chapter in this section will offer experiment ideas in response to the obstacles that are named. You may be intrigued by one of them and give it a try, but don’t hesitate to design your own experiment. You have agency in your own life to take steps to pass through. Experimenting your way into a new reality is a great expansion plan as your mind and heart grow.[2]