Why Wilderness?

What often strikes me about the stories told in the Bible is the landscape, the wilderness in which they often take place. We are told about encounters with God in the wilderness. Moses led the children of Israel through the wilderness to the promised land. He received the Ten Commandments in the wilderness.
John appeared in the wilderness to prepare the way for Jesus.
Jesus spent forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. And during his ministry on earth he would spend time alone with God in the wilderness. It has been said that the God of Israel is a God of the wilderness.
In the wilderness you often find large skies and perfect silences. Such places speak of the infinity of the divine, of a God beyond description who cannot be placed into a neat and tidy dogmatic box.
We don’t need the desert to find the wilderness, any wild place is a wilderness, and any place we go to be alone can be a wilderness. It seems to me that we can find God in the wild places simply because God can be more easily found in places beyond human contrivance and preference. In the wilderness things are simply what they are, revealing something of the God who is what God is.
In the wilderness there is space, though not emptiness, this is a space like a baby’s mind, open to all the possibilities that God and or the universe have to offer.