My wife gave me a very unique gift for my birthday this year. Essentially, it’s a glorified key chain that will never be used for keys. Instead, produced by a company called The Wander Club, the idea is to collect, not keys, but little engraved tokens commemorating places one has visited and add them to the ring.
Seven gold hexagonal tokens mark the continents. I’m thinking there’s probably not too much demand for Antarctica—at least, to commemorate a visit. All the other tokens are round, and wanderers can purchase them for countries, US states, and the US National Parks. For a few extra dollars, the date can be added reflecting the year of visit. Creative travelers can customize tokens, as well.
My “wanderchain” came with ten tokens, marking the national parks we’ve visited through the years:
- ACAD – Acadia National Park in Maine
- MACA – Mammoth Cave in Kentucky
- INDU – Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan
- GRSM – Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina
- GLBA – Glacier Bay in Alaska
- DENA – Denali National Park in Alaska
- GRCA – Grand Canyon in Arizona
- JOTR – Joshua Tree National Park in southern California
- SEKI – Sequoia/King’s Canyon National Park
- YOSE – Yosemite National Park
It’s quite a blessing to review that list. We’ve been able to visit some pretty amazing places in our nearly 40 years of marriage! In a few weeks, I may be able to add a few more tokens to the list, too, as we plan to visit Rocky Mountain, Mt. Rainier, and Crater Lake National Parks—assuming COVID craziness doesn’t ruin our plans again.
Anyway, if you’ve followed these posts much, you can certainly guess why Chris gave me such a gift, with my love of the outdoors, backpacking, hiking, visiting the National Parks, and so on. Signing me up for “the Wander Club” seems an appropriate gift.
Wandering Well
That reminds me of a J.R.R. Tolkien quote I’ve seen printed on a few different products marketed to hikers:
“Not all who wander are lost.”
I certainly concur on one level. I’ve done my share of “wandering” and wasn’t lost in the journey. Although, to be precise, I’m not sure that mapping out a trail and then following it could qualify as wandering.
More along the lines of actual wandering would be some of our one-day road trips, mostly during autumn in Vermont. Leaving in mid-morning, we down would head down a chosen road in a general direction, with a nebulous idea of ending up at some pre-selected restaurant for dinner. What happened in the meantime, and where, was more serendipitous as we wandered the countryside, venturing down one gravel road that led to another.
On every one of those wandering adventures, we were rewarded with a scene of unexpected beauty or something remarkably unique. If you ever go to Vermont during leaf season, I highly recommend this approach. Just be sure you have a GPS so when it’s time to head to that restaurant at the end of the afternoon, you’ll be able to find your way back to civilization!
So wandering in this sense can be rewarding, stress-relieving, and quite delightful.
Wandering Not So Well
Yet not all wandering is such a positive experience! While Tolkien is right that not all who wander are lost, some are!
In general, this would be the primary sense in which “wandering” is used in the Bible. I fired up my Logos Bible software to do a quick search on the topic, wanting to see how the word is used in the Scriptures. Before entering “wander” and hitting the magnifying glass, though, I noodled a bit to see if I could remember a positive use of the word. Drew a blank on that one. So I searched.
In the KJV, the term shows up 33 times; 47 times in the ESV. Why the difference, I wondered as I wandered through my search results. Turns out it simply has to do with word choice.
For example, the first occurrence of “wanderer” in the ESV is in Genesis 4:12, which records God’s punishment on Cain for the murder of his brother Abel.
“You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” God tells him.
Instead of “wanderer,” the KJV uses the term “vagabond.” Either way, the English word is chosen to describe a Hebrew word meaning “to move to and fro; to flutter.” This is not a positive, stress-relieving, refreshing life ahead for the pioneer of sibling rivalry and murder! Cain’s response makes that clear. “My punishment is greater than I can bear!” he complains to the Almighty Judge.
I seriously doubt Cain wore a “Not all who wander are lost!” t-shirt.
Nor did Abraham when he wandered off into Egypt during a time of famine. Nor did Hagar when she and her son Ishmael were banished from home, wandering off in the parched wilderness of Beersheba. Nor did the bewildered Joseph as he wandered hither and yon looking for his brothers.
And what of the couple million Hebrews in the Sinai desert? Heading to the land of promise, they were. Until they arrived at its borders, contemplated the apparent difficulty of possessing it, and decided there was no way God could overthrow the heathen inhabitants. So rather than act in faith upon the promise of God, they mounted a rebellious protest against God’s appointed leaders, determined to appoint a leader who could lead them back to the wonderful world of Egyptian slavery.
Imagine seven-year-old Benji hearing his mother wail and his father rail against Moses. And 14-year-old Yahudah as he makes an anti-Canaan poster and joins his dad in the down-with-Moses march. Then there are the newlyweds, 16-year-old Rachel and her 18-year-old husband Joachim. Caught up in the mayhem, they dread the thought of returning to a life of brickmaking, but their parents on both sides are insisting it’s that or certain death at the hands of the Canaanites. Both dads grab stones with the mob intent on killing Joshua and Caleb.
Then God speaks.
Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.’
– Numbers 14:28–34 (ESV)
Looking back on God’s response to the matter and the subsequent years, Moses declared,
…the Lord’s anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was gone.
— Numbers 32:13 (ESV)
Ouch.
No, not all who wander are lost. Benji and Jehudah and Rachel and Joachim weren’t. But in the forty years of wandering, they each stood next to the desert graves of their rebellious wandering parents who were.
Wandering Lost
On we could go through a survey of biblical wandering, and it’s all rather bleak. There’s wandering from God’s righteous pathway in a meandering of lostness, rebuked and cursed by the forsaken God. There’s the wandering of an appetite, doomed to the lostness of dissatisfaction. There’s wandering away from the exclusive worship of the one true God, bowing down to first this god and then that god—none of which save and deliver from spiritual darkness…from lostness. Over and over again, those who should know the blessing of God’s presence and abundance are doomed to wander in perplexity and scarcity because they forsook him.
Crossing the bridge from Old to New Testament eras, wandering still has a negative connotation. People who should know better wander away from the truth of the gospel, of sound doctrine, into myths and vain discussions. Those who lead others into such error, Jude declares, are “wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.” (v. 13)
Maybe joining the Wander Club isn’t such a great idea after all! None of these members will sport the “Not all who wander are lost” t-shirt, key chain, or necklace. Nor will the poster adorn their walls.
But someone might.
In his New Testament letter, James writes,
My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. – James 5:19-20
Imagine the joy of one who brings back the wanderer, lost in a meandering downward spiral of sin headed for eternal destruction, as he saves his soul from death and covers a multitude of sins! He might very well add the t-shirt to his wardrobe and the poster to the wall of his den. “I knew a wanderer once,” he recalls while momentarily gazing at the print, “who was lost…but is no more!” And that one joins a joyful club!
