Hear the call of the Spirit

As we enter Lent, we will hear the call of the Spirit:

to turn away from the calls of worldly success;

to turn away from the desire to have what everyone else has;

to turn away from greed and the race for power;

As we enter Lent, we are called to turn back to God:

may we seek forgiveness, 

may we seek healing, 

may we seek wholeness.

May our hearts be renewed in this season of self-denial.

Ellery Creek Big Hole, 90km west of Alice Springs, February 2025

Thoughts from Rev Dr Peter Hobson's message at Darwin Memorial Uniting Church

The desert is a place well known in the Biblical narrative. In our reading from Deuteronomy – we discover an ecclesial ancestry that remembers a wandering Aramean as a witness to God’s promise of covenant and blessing. And we are told that when we offer our first fruits to God – when we bring the best of what we have to the altar of the Divine – we are to remember our time in the desert… our time of testing… our time of trial… for this is what has formed us… and this is what has borne our fruit.

The three questions the accuser brings to Jesus are questions about hunger, about identity and about power. For many of us, these three questions still remain:

Will God provide for me when I am in need?

When the rubber hits the road – who am I – who do I serve?

What will I do with the power I have?  

But underneath the questions we have, we find human longings. The desert strips everything else away…  All of our belongings, our trappings, our status, our privileges – everyone is equal in the desert…And we often find three human longings rising to the surface:

The longing to be heard,

The longing to be known,

The longing to be found.

What if silence is not waiting for the answer - but silence is the answer itself?

During a 60 Minutes episode, Monty Roberts taught the world the secret of his horse whispering. It involves his getting into the corral with the untamed mustangs and staying as far away from the animal as possible, without leaving the enclosure. He also refuses to allow any eye contact between him and the horse. By moving slowly, but surely, away from the horse, and by keeping his eyes averted from the animal’s gaze, Monty slowly draws the horse to himself. Even though the beast is pounding the earth with his foot, and snorting and circling with great speed, Monty keeps steadily moving away from the horse. He won’t look at it. He won’t approach it. As astounding as it sounds, Monty can have a wild mustang saddled and carrying a rider quite happily. When asked his secret, he says, “The animals need to be with others so much, they would rather befriend the enemy than be left alone.” The horse whisperer turns his back on the horse – offers the horse nothing but silence…  and it is this silence that draws the horse to the whisperer.

The desert is the place of silence...perhaps it is the place God turns God's back on us to draw us to the one who whispers to our longings.