And then I was moved to go to Marlborough, to the Marketplace and Steeple-house, where I had pretty much Service, where they put me in Prison for six Weeks, where I Fasted six Days and six Nights, and neither eat Bread nor drank Water, nor no earthly thing; then I came to a feeding upon the Word, and had experience that [humanity] doth not live by Bread alone, but by every Word that proceedeth out of the Mouth of the Lord. —Barbara Blaugdone

Questions: What strength or encouragement do you draw from Jesus’ experience in the wilderness? What do you need to help you stay the course of love to which God calls you? How has time in the literal or metaphorical wilderness helped you develop spiritual depth or virtue?

A beekeeping monk once showed me the wisdom of small things.

At the monastery on the mountain, Brother Daniel taught me how to make the smoothest honey. Okay, the bees made the honey—I just stirred it.

Fresh honey, he explained, will naturally crystallize. Something deep within it needs a shape to follow. Left alone, honey hardens, becoming rough and brittle.

The secret, he said, is contact. Add to the new batch a small amount of graceful, already-formed crystals, and stir—for longer than you can imagine. Something amazing happens in that stirring: slowly, the honey around the original crystals begins to transform. Moving with a common rhythm, the surrounding molecules begin to mirror the smooth crystalline structure, echoing their shape and orientation. In ever widening ripples, the pattern spreads until the whole batch reflects the original design.

And if a tiny spoonful of this transformed batch is introduced into another batch—and someone stirs long enough—it can happen all over again. That winter, I got a lot of experience stirring.

The Gospel of Matthew tells the story of what can happen when something small begins to shape everything around it.

This man John appears with a vision of what is rough in us becoming smooth. At first, a few make contact. He proclaims a message about washing in the river, starting again. Discovering what it was all about in the first place. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

He calls them, one by one, to turn their lives around. They rediscover the pattern: a Way as old as Abraham, as ever-new as the river’s face.

This wilderness prophet, another man who loves honey, starts stirring. And one by one, the people around him begin to change. Crystal by crystal—person by person—the rough and brittle batch gets smoother; their orientation realigns to reflect the pattern that’s come near.

Jesus arrives in the midst of the movement—he’s been this Way before. Through water and Spirit, wilderness and temptation, he makes contact. The ancient Pattern that lives in him is recognized, recognizes, is born anew.

Ripples, a small thing spreads: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” By the sea, they leave their nets. And the stirring never ends.

Right now it feels like the rough places will never be smooth, like this world is too brittle. But I choose the wisdom of small things—of contact, and the stirring within.

–Noah Baker Merrill in “Friendly Perspective” from Matthew: The Life of Jesus