Word 26 – Desert

“I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.” (Psalm 63:1)

Perhaps you’ve gone hiking or camping in a woodsy “wilderness.” If so, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Israelites wandered through a wilderness of leafy trees and babbling brooks. Not so. They journeyed through a desert. While there were pockets of habitable land-Moses had once tended sheep in the region-much of the terrain was dry and barren.

Sometimes we go through stretches of life that feel desolate. Everything is dreary sameness. We feel weathered by the troubles of life.

The Lenten season is an acknowledgment that we live in desert sometimes. We may be familiar with S.M. Lockridge’s catchy phrase “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming!” Yes, but for us in this moment right now, it’s still Good Friday.

Ronald Rolheiser writes: “Lent invites us to stop eating, so to speak, whatever protects us from having to face the desert that is inside of us. It invites us to feel our smallness, to feel our vulnerability, to feel our fears, and to open ourselves to the chaos of the desert so that we can finally give the angels a chance to feed us.”

We might do well to approach our wilderness differently. This is a time of testing, of reminding us of how desperately inadequate we are, of making us aware of our deep need for God.

Perhaps we need to embrace our inner desert.

One person we might take a lesson from: Moses. Lent Woods writes: “Someone has observed that Moses spent his first forty yers in the royal palace thinking he was somebody, his next forty years in the deserts of Midian realizing he was nobody, and his last forty years seeing what God Almighty can do through a nobody who obeys Him.”

For Moses and the Israelites, the question was why. Why is our wilderness journey necessary?

The Bible explains: “Remember how the Lord  your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years to humble and test you…Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.” (Deuteronomy 8:2,5).

It is only human to want to escape our present darkness, but we should be mindful that the desert we’re in may be the work of God in our lives. Parched tongues make us thirsty for God.

Lent is a mini wilderness of forty days in which we experience a touch of the desert. Yet it points to an Easter of hope.

We are like those in the early days of the first century, tired and parched, dry as dust. We hear the booming voice of John the Baptist “preaching in the wilderness of Judea” (Matthew 3:1), calling for repentance and also announcing the imminent arrival of Jesus. It gives us the sound of hope.

As Scott Cairns says, “Even in the dryness of our desert journey, we are offered a sustaining taste of the sweet, the living waters. Even amid the gloom, we apprehend a glimmer of the light.”

We might then recall the words of Isaiah prophesying the coming of Christ: “I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs” (Isaiah 41:18). This is just one of several Old Testament prophecies about the desert being transformed, made new.

God can transform your desert too.

Preparing Your Heart for Easter

Maybe the desert you’re in comes with silence. Maybe in that silence you can better hear God calling you. Maybe you can hear His voice counseling you for His great purpose. What does this wilderness teach you?

Lord God, help me listen in the silence.