Deserts

I’m exhausted. It’s nearly 11:00 – about 2 hours past my bedtime – with a long day behind me and couple more of them ahead. In the midst, I’m thinking about what it means to be this tired and to long/look for God’s rest in the midst. I go to the desert.

Usually the desert is the place from which we want to run: dry, hot, parched, savage, lonely, desolate. It is not a place we expect will offer us rest or comfort; rather, just the opposite. But I’m thinking that may be a skewed perspective; that maybe the place in which we are the most spent, the most dried up, the closest to the end of our rope (whether physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally) is indeed, where rest, beauty, and relationship awaits. Listen to these words from Belden Lane in Desert Attentiveness:

We cross its sands — unwelcomed, stripped of influence and reputation, the desert caring nothing for the worries and warped sense of self-importance dragged along behind us. There in the desert everything is lost. Absolutely everything. The extent of its unrelenting indifference is devastating. This awareness, at first, is terrifying. But if we stay long enough, resisting the blind panic that gnaws at our minds, we discover — beyond hope and all caring- that “in the end we are saved by the things that ignore us.” The desert’s silent immensity is able to absorb every grief and anxiety, all the fears and brokenness we are able to pour into it. In being emptied of everything, oddly enough we know ourselves to be loved unconditionally — for the first time in our lives. The deepest mystery of love is never realized apart from the experience of having nothing to offer in return. Only there does love reveal itself in unaccountable wonder.

I love this language – a painting of desert scenery that reframes my own experiences, my own fears, my own brokenness, and yes, my own exhaustion.

And now, just before I do actually stop typing and go to sleep, these words from Isaiah 35:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing…Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God.” Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; …the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

The desert. I need it. Truly, in this context, I want it. And it’s offered – in places I don’t often expect. ‘Wonder where else rest, beauty, relationship (and God) might be present, available, and active that I just miss because I’ve predetermined what that’s going to look like? Maybe, when I’m not quite so tired and can keep my eyes open for a bit longer, I’ll keep my eyes open – and watch for deserts, for margins, for surprising dwellings I might otherwise pass by.

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