Liberating Leadership
Edward Abbey can rub most people the wrong way. Sorry to say, he never has gotten under my skin. I don't dream of being as rebellious as he was nor non-conformist. But I do love his descriptions of place and people across the Desert Southwest. In Beyond The Wall, he writes about the tallest mountain in Texas, Guadalupe Peak. His description of the peak and the park surrounding it are inviting and picture something of an Oasis in the desert. Truth is, there are very few people in the area and it sees far fewer visitors than the average National Park.
Most mountain areas in the Rockies have plenty of people nearby, think of Denver and the front range. But Guadalupe does not fit in to this high population mentality. For the most part, it's wilderness, even though you can find Aspen's and Ponderosa Pine, even a Douglas fir on occasion. But the deepest impression a visitor might take away is the overwhelming desert that surrounds the peak. It is relentless in most directions. It is like a great moat that prevents one from ever approaching the highlands and their cooler furnishings.
As much as I love the desert and mountains though, it is what Abbey writes about the people who live in this area.
Such an environment breeds a cantankerous variety of human. For instance, I was told of the former owner and operator of a gasoline station near Pine Springs, on the eastern edge of Guadalupe Park, who refused to sell gasoline to strangers if the strangers car failed to carry Texas license plates. Why? Well, for the main and simple reason that foreigners had no business nosing around Pine Springs Texas.
If you've spent any time in Texas, you get the sense that this could happen in just about anyplace in that proud state. But I think it is especially likely in the desert of West Texas. This next paragraph is interesting as well.
There was a similar time in Israel's history as well. Numbers 13 offers a picture of desert dwellers trying to come to terms with what was right in front of them but they could not grasp it. They could see the highlands, and had examples of the bounty of the land paraded right in front of them but they could not ascend from the desert to the higher, more prosperous regions. They could not enter the promised land. They truly could not be led. They preferred their own leadership to that which God provided. God Himself could not lead them.
So they settled for 40 years in the wilderness, the desert. They refused to believe that God could carry them to new heights. I think they were like those West Texans in the sense that Abbey wrote about. They had a fierce sense of self and trust in their own abilities and could not come to faith in God. It would cost them everything except their children's eventual future. They all died in the wilderness except Caleb and Joshua. Only their children would go forward into the Promised land.
It stands as one of the most massive failures of leadership ever described. The group of twelve men picked to spy out the land were certainly leaders. They just couldn't lead in faith, but fear. Their fear of other men was more influential than their faith in God. It's no wonder they were ornery and hard to get along with during their wilderness wanderings.
I wonder what 2012 will be like for us. Will it be a year of successful leadership in faith or a year of wandering due to fear. Which will steer my life, my family, my church? Let's give Caleb his due. He and Joshua were the committee members who continue to teach us how to live by faith. They had complete confidence in God and that they were in God's hands. May 2012 be the same for us. When we look back a year from now, it will be from the high places above the desert, refreshed and empowered by the Spirit of God. May God lead us with His liberating leadership.
Another story: About four years ago a local rancher, James Prather, seventy-nine years old, was riding alone in the rocky foothills looking for a cow, when he had an accident--his horse stumbled, broke its leg and rolled on top of the old man. The fall broke one of Prather's legs, a few ribs, and trapped him beneath the twelve-hundred pound body of the horse. The horse, alive trough crippled, kept thrashing about. The old man drew his revolved and shot the horse dead. Then he unholstered his knife and cut his way free from the carcass. He rested for a while before crawling three miles over rock, through brush and cactus, to the nearest road. He waited there for two days without food or water until somebody came along in a pickup truck. The old rancher was in a rage because nobody had found him sooner.Tough people. Desert type people. The desert and its inhabitants are often tough people and not given to intruders. Nor are they likely to be led by anyone but themselves. Many West Texans are out there in the wide open spaces precisely because they distrust or even dislike leadership.
There was a similar time in Israel's history as well. Numbers 13 offers a picture of desert dwellers trying to come to terms with what was right in front of them but they could not grasp it. They could see the highlands, and had examples of the bounty of the land paraded right in front of them but they could not ascend from the desert to the higher, more prosperous regions. They could not enter the promised land. They truly could not be led. They preferred their own leadership to that which God provided. God Himself could not lead them.
So they settled for 40 years in the wilderness, the desert. They refused to believe that God could carry them to new heights. I think they were like those West Texans in the sense that Abbey wrote about. They had a fierce sense of self and trust in their own abilities and could not come to faith in God. It would cost them everything except their children's eventual future. They all died in the wilderness except Caleb and Joshua. Only their children would go forward into the Promised land.
It stands as one of the most massive failures of leadership ever described. The group of twelve men picked to spy out the land were certainly leaders. They just couldn't lead in faith, but fear. Their fear of other men was more influential than their faith in God. It's no wonder they were ornery and hard to get along with during their wilderness wanderings.
I wonder what 2012 will be like for us. Will it be a year of successful leadership in faith or a year of wandering due to fear. Which will steer my life, my family, my church? Let's give Caleb his due. He and Joshua were the committee members who continue to teach us how to live by faith. They had complete confidence in God and that they were in God's hands. May 2012 be the same for us. When we look back a year from now, it will be from the high places above the desert, refreshed and empowered by the Spirit of God. May God lead us with His liberating leadership.
Comments