“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” Isaiah 35:1
Moses was approximately eighty years old when God called him to be the instrument by which Israel would be delivered from the salvery of Egypt. For forty years Moses had lived in a wilderness, a deserted land, there tending the sheep of his father in law. Though he had known the witness of the Spirit to his heart in Egypt concerning God’s calling, he did not understand during that period of forty years, being raised in Pharoah’s household, that he was not yet ready to lead the people out of slavery. The calling was pending upon him, but the effectual working and realization of that calling, would require the desert, and the wilderness. Why? First of all, it is because it takes a long time to stop a fully functioning, and powerful, locomotive which is under a full head of steam. Forty years would be necessary to slow this locomotive of a man to the point where God could speak to him, and he would listen. But also, it would take that long to bring Moses to see and understand the necessity of an absolute and utter dependence upon God for the realization of all that God commanded him to do, and to be. In the desert, where life is simple, quiet, and slow, there is stillness, a stillness of heart and circumstance, which God will use to make His calling and will clear. It is also where, without man’s devices and means, God will Himself come and appear to Moses, God meeting with man. It is there also where the essential of seeing God as holy is engrained into Moses’ mind and heart. The desert flower, hidden to the world, whose beauty and fragance drew so little attention, was about to blossom. It would be God’s doing, and would be marvelous in our eyes. That which would be the experience and pattern for Moses, would eventually be known and felt by the people of God, Israel. They too would know the “drought and thirst” of the desert experience, not only from a physical standpoint, but spirtually. The great and wonderful satisfying source of life in the desert was the revelation of God to the heart and soul. It is there that the lesson would be learned that God is the God of the blossoming in the desert because it is there that He reveals Himself to the individual who seeks Him wholly.
What are the deserts of men’s lives which are not an end, but a prelude to God’s blessing? In the days of Samuel, the “desert” consisted of a spiritual darth, an almost total lack of the revelation of God to the people. It was a time of famine, not so much from a physical standpont, but from a spiritual one, one where God rarely spoke openly. That would change with the coming of Samuel, for God began to “appear” again in Shiloh by the word of the Lord.
In the New Testament, we find in John’s gospel, the mention of “the woman at the well,” or the Samaritan woman, with whom Jesus spoke. She was in a desert, a place of great thirsting and consciousness of need. Nothing she could do could quench that thirst, for she was seeking to satisfy a spiritual need in a physical way. It would only be when she came to realize that the means of her pursuing “life” and “meaning” was wrong, totally wrong, that she would turn to the God of Moses, the God of the desert, to meet the deep needs of her heart.
When Jesus stood up and cried out in Jerusalem, “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink,” he was addressing those who were living in the desert, a place where the life-giving Spirit of God can water the thirsty land, causing it to blossom. Moses, the Samaritan woman, and all men everywhere, are called to drink of the Life-giving stream.
Dear Father, Cause us to blossom. In Jesus’ name, Amen.