Mark Buchanan - The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God

Marks imagination, like the God about whom he writes, is dangerously unpredictable. The Holy Wild is a gateway to the spiritual world that many of us forget exists. His treatment of the Good Samaritan alone is worth the read.

J OHN O RTBERG ,

Author of Everybodys Normal Till You Get to Know Them

Hes done it again. The Holy Wild is a fabulous book. I want to write like Mark when I grow up.

B ETH M OORE ,

Founder of Living Proof Ministries

THE HOLY WILD
published by Multnomah Books

Published in association with the literary agency of Ann Spangler and Company, 1420 Pontiac Road SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49506.

2003 by M. A. Buchanan, Inc.

International Standard Book Number: 978-1-59052-448-0

Cover image of mountains by Photonica / Jason Frank Rothenberg Background cover image by Photolibrary.com
Interior design by Katherine Lloyd, The DESK, Bend, Oregon

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from:
The Holy Bible, New International Version 1973, 1984 by International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.

Other Scripture quotations are from:
The Amplified Bible ( AMP ) 1965, 1987
by Zondervan Publishing House.

The Message by Eugene H. Peterson
1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002.
Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
All rights reserved.

The Holy Bible, New King James Version ( NKJV ) 1984 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout prior written permission.

For information:
MULTNOMAH BOOKS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, CO 80921

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Buchanan, Mark Aldham.

The holy wild / by Mark Buchanan.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-59052-249-4
eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-56362-0

1-59052-448-9

1. Trust in GodChristianity. I. Title

BV4637.B83 2003

231.6dc22

2003014193

v3.1_r1

I dedicate this book to my church,

New Life Community Baptist.

Ive never known a people as peculiar as you.

May we dwell long together in the Holy Wild.

S ince God did not give me the gifts of a monk, he made me a monks failed cousin, a writer. Both callings render you slightly odd, a man alone in a room, denying one part of his manhood in order to awaken another. Both force you to shape silence and darkness and waiting into prayer. Both teach you the agonies of silence and of speaking, and the way Gods voice can brim in each. Both require you to listen much, pray much, study much, plow much. One demands you drink much wine, the other much coffee. Ill let you figure out which is which.

Both are lonely vocations.

But even monks and writers have their community, those whose patience and generosity make our quixotic and somewhat leechy existence possible, even profitable. My community is huge, the living and the dead, a great cloud of witnesses. You are too many to name all at once. But at the risk of missing many, I dare name a few.

My church. How amazing you arehow gifted and giving and forgiving and peculiar, in the best way. You keep teaching me, over and over, how to dance in the Holy Wild, going headlong into a dangerous obedience and discovering life there. Thank you.

My publisher. How gracious you arehow encouraging and strengthening and shrewd, in the best way. You keep pushing me, again and again, to map the Holy Wild, to name its depths and heights, to trace its outer reaches and inner sanctums. Thank you. Thanks especially to Bill Jensen for continuing to champion me, and to my editor Heather Kopp (and David) for disentanglingor when all else failed, slicing clean throughmany of the early manuscripts Gordian knots and weaving it back into wholeness. And thanks, Heather, for great chapter titles.

My agent, Ann Spangler. How wise you arehow discerning and supportive and feisty, in the best way. You keep averting me, time after time, from pitfalls Im headed toward in my sometimes reckless pursuit of the Holy Wild. Thank you.

My family. How loving you arehow welcoming and protective and ordinary, in the best way. You keep bringing me, day after day, to the reality of the Holy Wild, right here, right now, in the simple and mundane thingsbread, water, jumping on the trampoline, lying beside you in bed, talking in whispers. I love you, Cheryl, Adam, Sarah, and Nicola. Thank you.

My God. Howwell, thats what this book is about. Thank You.

To Him be all glory.

Preface

I m tired.

I bet you are, too. Weariness is epidemic, a virus weve carried in our blood so long, so deep, were almost immune to it, like those people in tropical lands who are chronically malarial. If youre like me, youve pretty much adapted to ityour manic spurts and sluggish spells, your outbursts and breakdowns, your jangled nerves and leaden limbs. Your restlessness. All the things to do. A dozen fire sticks to juggle, a hundred dike holes to plug, a thousand cats to herd. All the whirring, whirling, wearying busyness of life.

It makes you tired.

I hope God loves irony. Because I set out to write a book on resting, resting in God, resting in His rich, varied, steady character. And then partway through, I got so rushed and panickyso tiredI began to write out of my own anxiety. I wanted to describe life from the eyes of Mary, the one who sits in rapturous wonder at Jesus feet, drinking it all in, but found myself inside the skin of Martha, the meddling, fiddling, fuming sister who resents both Jesus and anyone who gets close to Himand spewing it all out. Shes the one who wont rest and so wants to spoil it for the rest.

She knows nothing of the Holy Wild.

But one of the gifts of writing is that it forces you to take your subject seriously. I think that, in my case anyhow, God calls me to write the books I am the least qualified to write. The reason is as obvious as it is trite: Before I can teach it, I must first learn it.

I wrote this book during what was easily the busiest of my forty-two years. And yet, except for my Martha moments, I have lived this yearentering into its desolations and consolationsmore fully than any I can remember.

I have learned to rest more in God. And I have tasted more of God.

This book is about that God. It is about leaning all the way into Him, learning to put our entire weight in who He is and what He does. And its about discovering life as God always meant it to be.

Come to me, Jesus said, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. That is not an invitation to idleness. He doesnt want to lull you to sleep. He wants to awaken you. He wants to make you fully alive.

He wants to take you on the ride of your life, into the Holy Wild.