Water is a commodity here in the Southwestern desert. We highly prize it and nearly collapse into giddy convulsions when the heavens unleash it onto the desert floor during our summer monsoon. So whenever you happen upon it here, it’s like finding a pearl of great price. You lap it up emotionally and spiritually, and always physically, since dehydration looms as a potential health hazard for desert-dwellers.
And doesn’t that sound like an analogy of life?
Have you ever been in a desert time of your life?
We all traverse times of plodding through what feels like an emotional and spiritual desert. We live in “a funk” as a friend of mine calls it. Many of us experience deserts containing some scraps of life, while others can’t seem to locate a shred of nourishment anywhere. We stumble through life, pursuing mirages and coming up dry. We’re in a hurry to get through it—believing it has nothing valuable to teach us—and look in all the wrong places for life nourishing water.
Or we wait and wait and wait for the water to come to us.
Knowing God’s promises about the desert
Sometimes what we need to do is trust, listen, and look for it, recalling what God proclaimed to the prophet Isaiah:
“Listen carefully, I am about to do a new thing. Now it will spring forth; Will you not be aware of it? I will even put a road in the wilderness, Rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19, Amplified Bible).
- First, God calls us to listen.
- Then he tells us he’s about to do a new thing and describes what it will be.
- He cautions us to be aware of it, looking for it.
- He tells us he’ll provide a road in the wilderness;
- and make rivers to flow in the desert.
I thought a lot about that passage, the pricelessness and spirit-infusing joy of finding water in the desert this last weekend after hiking in Sabino Canyon, a recreational area near our home described as “a desert oasis.”
The engineer and I could have parked ourselves at the bottom of the canyon and waited for the water to flow to us. But that would have been an exercise in futility because rain is rare here this time of year, and that day the early rising sun quickly burned away the threadbare cloud blanket and heated up the canyon walls.
Instead, the engineer and I went in search of the water. Rather than attempt to carve out our own road, we took the path provided. We actually pulled out a map to follow. We hiked and ascended and eventually arrived at the prize—melted mountain snow water cascading down chiseled and glossed granite cliffs into clear pools. Pools large enough to toss your body into and paddle around in. Seven waterfalls and trickles stacked at the end of a boxed desert canyon. A source of life and refreshment to wildlife, plants, and people.
After claiming a spot at the edge of one of the pools, a pool that had already been claimed by a pair of male Mallard ducks—who thought they’d scored big when we fished around in our fanny packs and extracted two energy bars for a snack they hoped we’d share with them—I unlaced and dragged off my Keen hiking boots and wooly socks and slid my swollen feet and throbbing left toe into the crystal clear, COLD water.
My feet were grateful for that water, my eyes and brain were grateful for that water, and my soul screamed internal heaven-sent hallelujahs for it. I could have sat there for hours, intermittently soaking my feet, watching the ducks beg, paddle around lazily and leave rippling wakes behind them. I could have watched the cloud wisps putter across the powder blue sky; the rock faces change shape in the pool reflections; the saguaro cactus cast short, shorter and then lengthening shadows across the cliffs they miraculously find enough nourishment to grow in; the candy apple red cardinals fly up-down zigzag patterns from one shade-providing mesquite tree to another.
Can you avoid a desert time?
But the frustrating reality was that I couldn’t stay up there indefinitely in that seven-pool nirvana. I had to walk back down the canyon away from it. And that’s the way life functions for most of us too.
We can’t avoid it. For whatever reason, life or God himself orchestrates a desert time in our lives. Moses fled to the desert after he murdered a man and hid there for forty years before God called him back to Egypt to free his people. Bible teacher Dr. J. Vernon, McGee quips that Moses was getting his Backside-of-the-Desert degree. While that always gets a chuckle, there’s a heap of truth to it.
Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days. We don’t know what he experienced every day on his journey, but we do know Satan harassed and tempted him when he seemed to be at his weakest.
Without trying to sound crass, I’d say the experiences toughened both of them up for what lie ahead.
Elijah the prophet orchestrated his own trip to the desert when—terrified—he ran for his life from the evil Queen Jezebel and ended up being ministered to by God. Elijah managed to find a hideout near a flowing stream, his personal stream in his desert. Through that experience, I’m guessing he learned a lot more about God’s mercy and compassion.
Jesus, Moses and Elijah all learned a lot during their desert time—about God and about themselves. We learn about them and God through our reading of these events.
You can learn a lot during your desert time, even while searching and waiting for the water God promises to give you.
How are you handling your desert time?
Usually we need to lean into our desert time, without trying to fight it or run from it. But then we need to make sure that we don’t get mired in it. Stuck in our parched wilderness.
Some questions I invite you to ask yourself to make your, or someone else’s desert time productive. The counsel of a friend (you) could be just what they need right now, a life-replenishing river in their desert.
- Are you experiencing a desert time right now in your life, and how are you handling it? Could you be encouraging and supporting someone you know who is experiencing one?
- Are you trusting wholeheartedly in God’s promise to provide you a “road” out, a river of spiritual life at the end of your desert journey?
- Are you asking God what he’s trying to teach you during this desert time, so you don’t have to stay there any longer than necessary?
- Are you asking him to reveal the road out?
- And are you actively searching for the life-giving water?
Care to Share?
I’d love to hear how you handle your desert times. If you’d like to share, just head over to the Blog page to leave a comment you can share with others. W want to help each other successfully traverse our desert times.
I pray you spend your time rejoicing in God’s promise of providing a road out, a road leading to a temporal and spiritual stream in your desert, and the heaven-bound road you’ll traverse when your time on Earth is done!
Until Monday!
Blessings,
Andrea
May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).
Photo 2018 © Andrea A Owan
