Walking In the Wasteland

Once you surrender your fears and worries to God, they don’t just go away. You will still have to face the news, the articles in the paper, the ups and downs of your husband’s mood, the incessant phone calls, the needs of your family, and the black cloud of the trial, incident, shooting, etc. floating over your house. Don’t give up. I have found myself repeating the same words and phrases over and over: “Provide for us, Lord;” “Comfort my husband;” “Protect us, God;” “Help us to sleep in peace;” “Father, please make what I have today enough.” God doesn’t care if you repeat yourself. He hears you, his precious child, and he longs to save you and work his beautiful, perfect, redeeming good out of the mess you are in. He is going to do a new thing in your life, unfold a new plan, and bless you in new ways if you just trust Him to carry you through. A friend once gave me Isaiah 43:19 to hold on to during a trial my husband was going through, and I still just love the imagery of it: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” I grew up in Africa, the child of missionary parents. We lived in a parched area of Kenya, desolate and bare of anything but thorn trees for most of the year. Then, suddenly, a cool breeze would blow across the desert sand, carrying with it the smell of rain. We would immediately run for cover indoors, because just after the breeze would come a wall of torrential rain that would beat down mercilessly, sometimes for days, overflowing the nearby river bed with a swift, muddy current that heaved up and flooded the banks. A day or two after the rain, the barren sand would transform into a sea of tiny yellow flowers and fresh green leaves. The massive thorn tree that shaded our house would burst into vivid green as well, and our arid landscape would become lush with vegetation overnight, providing abundant food for people and animals alike. This is what I picture, that when my life at its worst seemed parched, barren, that nothing good could ever follow what we were enduring, God was waiting for the right moment to transform the landscape, to cause beauty to grow out of the bare sand. And he has.