The signs that you have arrived: no more manna, circumcision begins again and a new generation who has unlearned the past and will now relearn for the future. When can we do that with the institutional church, please?
One of the glorious but little told insights in the story of the Exodus is that God gets everyone to the Promised Land pretty quickly, far quicker than the forty years we talk about but when they get to the border everyone is moaning so God says: "The moaners aren't allowed in. Go and wander until you are all dead and a new generation has begun." Alleluia! Even the Promise Land won't please folk who gripe about this and complain about that so off they go to die-out (that takes the 40 years) and come back when your children and children's, children have forgotten all of that and look more towards the future with passion rather than the past with regret.
And even then other things happen to break the hankering after the things that have been: circumcision begins again: a new sign for a new people, understanding it through the Exodus experience of hope rather than the Egypt experience of slavery. Manna too: spoon fed in the desert, now new responsibility to look after themselves. So much growing up to be done, so much unlearning and relearning.
And a new kind of wilderness: a positive one this time, from the desert wilderness to a wilderness full of live like the Highlands of Scotland, gloriously majestic and full of a story still to be told. Lent is turning now from a story of scarcity to a hope of plenty.
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