Wellbeing comes slowly. Old concrete finally crumbles in its weakest point, cracks, allows a tiny seed to take hold, push up, to the light. Thompson calls her own story within the book Pharaoh's Daughter , referring to the daring woman who defied her father and saved the baby Moses. This is the story I am drawing on today as I speak of the wilderness. The exodus story is one around which our western history and culture pivot.
Exodus is the oldest book of the Bible.
It is the story that reflects and influences our linear view of life, that we move from bondage to liberation, believing that there is reason to hope in the future, that freedom and progress are always possible. There is no direct, immediate path from slavery to freedom. There is a lesson here. To me, the significance of the wandering period is that we must expect life to be complex and confusing, not simple. Freedom is not easy.