Finding My Path

I’ve come away to the woods this morning for a time of quiet solitude.  I’ve come seeking time with God and God alone.  As I was reading, praying through a psalm and listening to God’s voice I also heard another call – the call of nature and knew that it was time to find a restroom.

I struck out cross-country on a beeline to the nearest facilities.  It was a pleasant walk but much of my attention was taken up with picking my way through the washed out gullies, around downed trees and, especially avoiding the ubiquitous poison ivy.   In a few minutes I came upon a bike trail which I knew went close to the restrooms and I started down it.

I thought to myself, “It sure is a lot easier walking on the trail rather than bushwhacking”.  As I thought on this the Spirit revealed that this was an analogy of my life for the past few years.  I’ve been on a passionate quest to draw closer to God and I feel like I’ve made progress but it’s been like bushwhacking cross-country.  Sometimes I’m just whistling along, walking in the sunshine, enjoying God’s creation and then bam, there’s a gully, a downed tree, sometimes even a big gator-infested swamp.  My relationship skids to a crawl as I work through or around the obstacles.

A couple of years ago as I was dealing with some of my spiritual obstacles I began reading about some of the early Christians and how they lived out their faith.  I was particularly drawn to the Celtic Christians and other early monastic people.   After months and months of spiritual bushwhacking I had stumbled upon a clear, well-marked path.  God had led some of my early Christian brothers and sisters in the same direction I was headed and had used them to blaze a trail for me and others to follow.

So thus began my adventure of incorporating into my everyday life the monkish values of:

• Solitude and silence
• Faith and compassion
• Friendship and mentoring
• Contemplation and leadership

It seems I am not the only present-day evangelical that has stumbled upon the monastic path to a richer relationship with God.  According to the articles Monastic Evangelicals and A Higher Ecclesiology for Evangelicals in Christianity Today many, especially younger, evangelicals are looking to the early and medieval church for ‘new’ pathways to God.

What are your thoughts on this new monasticism?