In the screenplay of Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ, John the Baptist advises Jesus: “The God of Israel is a god of the desert. If you want to speak to him, then you go to the desert.” It was through the wilderness that Moses led the nation of Israel on their journey to the Promised Land.
The wilderness experience became one of the most important themes of Jewish religion, and it remains so today. The theme is carried over to the New Testament. Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, prayed in the wilderness and fed the multitude in the wilderness.
The wilderness theme is a universal experience in every life because most of us find that we spend more time in the wilderness of life than we do in the promised land. Anne Hamilton wrote a poem entitled Desert: “A desert does not have to be A sandy waste where springs are dry; A life can shrink to barrenness If love goes by. A desert does not have to be A place where buzzards wheel at dawn; A heart can hold as dreadful things When faith is gone.”
The word bewilder means literally to be put in the wilderness. The children of Israel became bewildered in their faith; and that was their greatest danger. They complained about lack of food and water then questioned the ability of Moses to lead them out of the wilderness. They doubted God could bring them safely into the promised land and refused to enter it for fear of lack of strength. Again and again they demanded to return to Egypt.
Pastor/author Max Lucado writes: “The trip from Egypt to the Promised Land can be made in less than eleven days. It took the Israelites thirty-eight years. What they should have done, they didn’t. What they didn’t do, they should have. So God decided they needed some time to rethink a few things. He took them the long way. Maybe you’re on a detour in life’s journey. Things seem slow. The road seems dark. Maybe God is wanting to teach you a few things. Pay attention. You don’t want to spend thirty-eight years missing the point.”
I recently watched again the remake of the 1965, Jimmy Stewart classic: The Flight of the Phoenix. A plane with 10 passengers crash-lands in the Gobi Desert. It would be impossible to walk out. A map is no good because the wind alters the terrain every day. Fierce sandstorms can tear the flesh off. A compass is useless because magnetic iron in the mountains makes it spin. So the survivors re-build a plane from the scrap of the first plane and fly out of the desert. The tag line of the movie indicates their only hope, and also serves as God’s word for all who are bewildered: “The only way out is UP.” And so the Psalmist would declare, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord.”
Do not fear the wilderness of Life. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. God who leads in a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night is your God. God who rains down bread from heaven and gives water, even from solid rock, is your God. God who opens the way to Canaan is your God. “The God of Israel is a god of the wilderness. If you want to know him, then you go to the wilderness;” for it is only by God with you in the wilderness that you will reach the Promised Land.
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