A change in the weather,
I was praying that you and me might end up together.
It's like wishing for rain as I stand in the desert,
But I'm holding you closer than most,
For you are my heaven.- Ron Pope
Another song about love graces my ears, a peaceful yet earnest song with a catchy chorus and a decent singer. Here the artist is longing for his lover, and telling her that though the leaves change his love won't, however impossible it may seem. The impossibility is best understood when one considers his analogy, the likeliness of rain in the desert.
The desert tests you. God led Israel into the desert to test their faith. What was his strategy of conquering the promise land? It was having a people wander for forty years, and then watch their parents perish from disobedience, and doing so for the children to learn the centrality of trusting in God alone for salvation and sustenance. God doesn't want strong people. He wants weak people, people who acknowledge that their throat grows dry when they wander the desert, and people who know that as assuredly as God can provide physical sustenance, so can He also provide spiritual sustenance. Spiritual sustenance actually superceeds physical sustenance.
When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the Gospels, he was driven into the wilderness pictured above. Like the Israelites, God tested Him. The passage took on new meaning when I visited to Israel and observed that this desert was not the Sahara, where all you see is sand. This is the Judean Wilderness, where all you see is rock. When the devil asked if Jesus would turn "these stones" to bread, he wasn't asking if Jesus could take the one or two stones peeping out of the sand and have a little snack. No, he was tempting Jesus to literally turn this rocky land into mountains and wadis (valleys) of bread, providing so much food, that-frankly, if I was Jesus, I would of done it. Jesus spent forty days without food and was convinced that He only needed God to preserve His life. He countered the devil by saying "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"
In our first day in the desert, our class for our Israel trip focused on God's words from Psalm 23, analyzing it bit by bit. This is a desert Psalm, because it is a shepherd Psalm, and shepherds have always found their home in the desert. I learned that the green pastures referred to in the Psalm are not the lush, endless, humid meadows of New England, but rather the the sprig on the cliff, and the bush in the ravine, the little food that sheep will eat to stay alive as they wander the dry land. God leads us beside this still waters and green pastures to restore us, but they are not necessarily full of excess. Our food is enough to keep us going for the day. The paths of righteousness that God takes us are through the valley of the shadow of death, but He is with us every step. Our hope is not that we are free of problems, but that we have a good shepherd who comforts us, provides for us, keeps us walking, and in the end will welcome us into His house for eternity!
I learned a lot in Israel, and this one place is just a drop in the ocean of my experiences and the vastness of truth in the Bible. However, this region stuck out to me like the dandelion did to the rhinos and Sid in Ice Age. I always need to trust my savior, even in times of plenty. There, in the desert, I was challenged to accept that Jesus satisfies, more than Snickers (and that is saying something). Psalm 63:5 says, "My soul shall be satisfied with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips." Jesus can restore my weary soul, not just my cracked lips.
If you are in a desert, savor the drops of water God gives you. Accept the change of weather. Wish and pray for rain, but be faithful if it doesn't come for some time. Trust Christ more than anything, and look forward to heaven where there will not be the longing of the desert, but the fulfillment of His eternal presence. Follow the good shepherd (John 10:11)!
Javier Colon singing "A Drop in the Ocean"
-I prefer his version and voice to Ron Pope's.
