Out there on the burning desert sands, lost in a trackless waste, Moses received his life’s mission and purpose. But the answers to his deepest questions are not to be found on television or in the refrigerator. It is fear that keeps a man at home where things are neat and orderly and under his control.

Who am I? What am I made of? What am I destined for?

Deep in a man’s heart are some fundamental questions that simply cannot be answered at the kitchen table.

Whatever else those explorers were after, they were also searching for themselves. As did John the Baptist, and his cousin, Jesus, who is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Where did the great prophet Elijah go to recover his strength? To the wild. The same is true of Jacob, who has his wrestling match with God not on the living room sofa but in a wadi somewhere east of the Jabbok, in Mesopotamia. He finds him (or is found by him) somewhere out in the deserts of Sinai, a long way from the comforts of Egypt. Look at the heroes of the biblical text: Moses does not encounter the living God at the mall. Where, finally, the geography around us corresponds to the geography of our heart. Where there are no deadlines, cell phones, or committee meetings. The masculine heart needs a place where nothing is prefabricated, modular, nonfat, zip lock, franchised, on-line, microwavable. Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man.

Wild at heart book boys quote