Waiting & WanderingAndy Freeman - 14 Sep 2013
During the early part of this summer I need to find a new house to rent. Something that I had anticipated being a straightforward process became the very opposite - hundreds of house viewings, a number of offers rejected. In the end I was faced with moving out of my home at the end of it’s tenancy and storing all my worldly goods in a friends garage whilst I stayed in his attic room. This in-between period lasted two weeks before I found a place to rent in an entirely different city to the one I had expected to live in.
As I reflected later on the experience I came to a striking personal conclusion - I seemed to obsessed with knowing where I was going. What is the plan? What will happen next month? How much will it cost? What will happen next? These were the live questions in my head. What did they achieve? Jesus pondered in Matthew 6 whether worrying about the future would actually change anything at all - now I got his point.
Some of the early monastic movements which 24-7 has taken such inspiration from took and entirely different approach. Their lives were transient in practice, but rooted only in love and obedience to God. The Franciscans for example did not even particularly care for their monastery or mother-house, instead being willing to wander as godly Troubadours, sharing the gospel and offering peace wherever they went. One of the most famous stories about Francis of Assisi is of him giving up everything he had including the very clothes on his back and standing naked before Bishop Guido of Assisi and his father Pietro and declaring himself fully devoted to God.
Compared to my panic over not knowing where I was to live or what direction my life would take, Francis devotion was challenging and striking.
Francis chose to wander. He saw this as part of the way he loved the world and particularly the poorest around him. Possessions would not hinder him. He would wander, speak to and love those he met. He would see where God took him. South American writer Leonardo Boff said that “He began to abandon his own world and enter the world of others.”
Since my move I’ve tried to let some of worries go a little more. To be prepared to wander and to wait for God. What might our days look like if we made a little more of our time unplanned, if we were prepared to see what God might do and to follow it?
GK Chesterton said “St. Francis walked the world like the pardon of God”. Could we be bringers of pardon, of love, of mercy - if we stopped worrying quite so much and started wandering just a little bit more?
Image by margaritone d'arezzo (scan) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons