Several years ago, my husband and I were camping in Moab, Utah with our one-year-old son. Camping is probably a generous term—we did have a pop-up camper and weren’t really roughing it. We did, however, drive about half an hour outside of town on a dirt road to the middle of nowhere, and then parked the camper at the top of a rocky hill. The views were spectacular, and we would only see another car on the dirt road about once every few hours. It was a little taste of the wilderness, with only us and our little camper. No cell service, no toilets, and no other people around.
This seemed like a fantastic experience until we decided the next day to head back into town to get a few groceries. After piling in the truck, my husband tried to start the vehicle, but it wouldn’t start. The truck’s battery was dead. And the wilderness experience that seemed like a lot of fun became quite scary.
I started to panic, wondering how we would ever get out of there. No cars came by on the road, and it was at least a day’s walk to get back into town with a one-year-old and only so much food for camping. Finally after a bit of worry, my husband brilliantly figured out that he could use the camper batteries to jump the truck battery, and we were finally moving again.
But what about the figurative wildernesses in which we find ourselves where we can’t figure a way out, and we sit and wait with no resources and no hope? Wildernesses are a real experience in life, and one which often catches us by surprise. I’m not sure why, as so many of the people in the Bible went through years and years of wilderness, sometimes figurative and sometimes quite literal. There are stories of prison, hardships, desert-living, wandering, frustration, hopelessness, disbursement and aching for home.
I was reading about the word wilderness and how it comes from the same root word as “to speak” in Hebrew. Brian Simmons (lead translator of the Passion translation) said that the wilderness becomes the place where God speaks to us in ways that He can’t elsewhere in our comfort or distraction. Most of the time when I find myself in a wilderness, though, I’m just panicking and looking for a way out. I can miss God’s speaking to me because I am so thoroughly obsessed on freeing myself from the miserable circumstance.
These days, I don’t want to miss the opportunity that is found in the wildernesses of life. I don’t want to choose them necessarily, but when God allows them, I know He wants to speak to my heart in ways I won’t hear if I’m comfortable, safe or home. I want to hear Him, and draw close to Him in these times of wilderness, of discomfort and of fear.
Generally I want to try to get out of the wilderness as quickly as possible. And I just want to learn the lesson already so I can get moving! I think, though, God wants to speak to our hearts and call us to Himself, not teach a lesson. I don’t need to learn more patience—I need Him to be my patience. I don’t need to learn to love better—I need Him to be my love. I don’t need more self-control—I need to entrust myself to Him to empower me to walk in His ways.
I don’t want to spend my time in the wilderness obsessing on how to get free. Yes, I will pray for it to be over, but in the meantime, I want to listen closely to what Jesus wants to speak to me while I’m there. I want to allow the moments of weakness and emptiness to push into God’s power in and through me.
Stop dwelling on the past. Don’t even remember these former things. I am doing something brand new, something unheard of. Even now it sprouts and grows and matures. Don’t you perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and open up flowing streams in the desert. Isaiah 43:18-19