24th March 2024 

Wilderness Wonderings (5)

I didn't expect, in mid-February, that the reflections prompted by a sand box and some squishy play dough at Messy Pancakes would last me for a 5-week series... but, as we come to the end of Lent and turn towards Holy Week, we come to the last of our wilderness reflections.

The wilderness, we know, is a hard place. It's a dry place, an uncomfortable place, a place where it takes all our energy simply to survive. And yet, although it is a place of pain and difficulty, the wilderness is, in the Bible, a place of preparation - for God's people in the Old Testament and for Jesus in the new - and a place where we discover God's protection and God's provision.

Today, in my final wilderness reflection, I am turning to one of my favourite passages in the book of Isaiah, where the prophet looks forward to the time when the wilderness becomes a place of praise.  

"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...
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." (Isaiah 35:1-2,6-7)

With God, no landscape is too wild, too arid for new life to blossom and for beauty to break forth. This is the hope of which Isaiah sang, to the Jewish people in exile in Babylon, who believed all hope was lost. And this is our hope too, as we turn our thoughts to Holy Week and to the anguish of the Cross. For, where we see only death, suffering and pain, God has already planted the seed that will bring new life to many (John 12:20-26). One day, when Jesus returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth and the wilderness will be no more. But for now, we can trust in the God who is not only present in but sovereign over the wilderness places, and who can, often unexpectedly, surprise us with new life in the most barren of places.

So I wonder about our wilderness places - the places of discomfort and struggle, where we are physically, emotionally or spiritually dry? I wonder where seeds of new life might, even here, be taking root, putting up shoots, blossoming abundantly?