A number of years ago, I was sitting with a group of friends at the foot of Jebel Musa, the traditional site of Mount Sinai, in the rocky desert of the Sinai Peninsula. We sat on the side of a hill, beneath the walls of St. Catherine’s monastery. St. Catherine’s was built in the 2^nd century—the oldest continually operating Christian monastery in the world. It was here that Jerome translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin and here that Saint Augustine wrote his famous Confessions. According to tradition, within the monastery’s walls grow the shoots of the Burning Bush, from which God spoke to Moses, calling him to lead the people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.

We sat on Holy Ground, and if ever God were going to speak to us, surely this was the place.

Just a Goat in the Wilderness

We sat together in the falling twilight singing hymns and praying together. Just then, a young goat wandered by, looking for a bit of grass growing in the rocky, parched soil. I was struck by his presence in that place, far away from other goats or goatherds, wandering alone in the wilderness.

The goat had clearly lost his way.

I thought about the many times I have felt like that little goat, wandering around helplessly in the metaphorical wilderness, wondering where all the other goats have gone. Searching for a bit of green pasture or a pool of still water to restore my soul. And I thought of all the other little lost goats I have known in my life, perhaps you among them, wandering around searching for their way in the world.

Just then, I was startled back from my thoughts by a loud, crying sound, echoing off the mountains, bouncing off the monastery, breaking the melody of our group’s singing. That little goat had made his way up a steep, rock cliff into a small cave high on the mountainside. In search of greener pastures, he had gotten himself stuck in an impossible situation.

The little goat was walking back and forth, looking for a way down. But he couldn’t find a steady path. He didn’t know which way to go. He paced back and forth in his cave, bleating and crying. Crying and bleating. He was stranded in the wilderness.

Oh how much like that goat I feel some days.

The Way will Find You

As we sat there at the foot of Jebel Musa, listening to that bleating goat, the sun sank lower behind the horizon. I continued to watch the cave, wondering how the goat would make his way back down to safety.

Then, from behind the mountain, a shadowy figure appeared as if out of nowhere, a lone goatherd making his way slowly up the side of the cliff. After a long climb, he reached the cave and, picking up the lost goat, he carried him gently down from the ledge and returned him to the place that he had prepared for him.

That, I thought, is who Christ is for us. I thought of the well-known passage in John 14:6 in which Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” But what I had missed in that passage, as many times as I had read it, was that just prior to saying that he is the Way, Jesus had said, “I go and prepare a place for you, and I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:3).

The beauty of the Gospel is this: Jesus is the Way. And the Way will find you.

Finding our Place

When we find ourselves like that little goat, stuck in the wilderness, crying our hearts out in a cave we can’t seem to escape, we need not lose heart. We don’t have to find the way. The Way will find us. The Way is just over the hill, listening to our cries. The Way will come to us and restore us to our place.

As the evening light faded into darkness, the goatherd walked back around the side of the mountain and out of sight, the little goat trailing along behind. He had found his place. And we, too, had found our place, there in the shadow of Jebel Musa. We were on holy ground.