Lion King Lesson II – Don’t Get Stuck in the Wilderness

This is Lion King Lesson II.  Read the first post here to follow the story.

After the death of Simba’s father, Mufasa, Scar blamed, shamed and scared Simba into running away and never return.  That was the first mistake Simba made.  He believed the lies of the enemy and acted on them.  He ran and kept running until he ended up in the wilderness.

But then something happened to Simba out in the wilderness, he made friends.  Friendly and funny, Timone and Pumba enter the scene and show him how great the wilderness is to live in.  They tell Simba that he doesn’t have to worry about the past, that he can run away from it and life will be fantastic – all you gotta do is sing ‘Hakuna matata’ – no cares, no responsibility and no worries.  Oh yes, it sounds so care-free, spontaneous and therepeutic that it can be very appealing.  But these are merely more lies that instead of bringing fear brought trust.  Timone and Pumba do such a great job at deceiving (I mean convincing) Simba into staying in the wilderness that they even convince him to eat bugs for the rest of his life.

Now that sounds completely insane, but when we’re hurting and lost we’ll try anything to make us feel better.  Simba was willing to live like a meerkat instead of a lion as long as he didn’t have to face his fears.  Simba started living the lie rather than living the promise, all he had to do was sing along.  They made him believe that the wilderness was better than the Kingdom and he got stuck there.  The worst kind of wilderness to be in is the one we think looks like a Kingdom.  Simba thought he was living like a King but he was really living like a peasant.

There was a time in my life when I got stuck in the wilderness.  I thought that was where my life would be forever and tried to make the best of it singing away my troubles – as they say.  But it didn’t change the fact that I was broken and hurting.  I ran to the wilderness to hide and left all my gifts, talents, hopes and dreams behind.  And rather than feeling better I felt more and more lost.  Nothing seemed to make sense any more and I lacked purpose in everything, so all I lived for was myself.  I grew more and more bitter, angry and disillusioned in my wilderness.    But weeks, months and years went by and I thought nothing would ever change, until one day it did…

 Look out for my next post, coming soon, to read more of this story.