When I was a girl growing up in New Mexico, my dad would take our family on short road trips across desert highways. I'd always close my eyes and snooze once we left the city and entered miles and miles of desert. It's just dry dirt. Nothing grows here. It's all brown and flat. What is there to see anyway?
Later, when I had the opportunity to spread my wings, I made my home with the San Francisco coastline, the Santa Barbara beaches, and then, the lush mountain passes of Colorado. Back then, I only knew how to find beauty in obvious majesty and wildly beautiful landscapes. The desert had been unexciting to me. That was before real pain in life required real hope, and caused me to treasure the real satisfaction of redemption in Christ.
You see, even the smallest flower will bloom in the desert if it receives rain.
Sometimes God leads us into the desert so that He can reveal the stream only He can carve out of the wasteland. Sometimes He allows us to experience the deepest thirst so that we might know the greatest satisfaction.
He is mighty, good, and sovereign...and so often, we miss the soul-quenching provision of His word because we are so focused on our square of parched ground.
I've been back in the desert for over a decade now, and this time...it's beautiful to me. The desert is colorful...if you learn to see it. It's lush with the growth of foliage that learns to survive with what He provides. It's grand in it's praise of the Master creator, and it's murmuring in it's whispers of His constant faithfulness.
The desert is a lovely place to learn how to depend.
“This is what the Lord says—
he who made a way through the sea,
a path through the mighty waters,
who drew out the chariots and horses,
the army and reinforcements together,
and they lay there, never to rise again,
extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
The wild animals honor me,
the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
the people I formed for myself
that they may proclaim my praise.”
**When my dear friend, Annalea, moved cross-country to New Mexico and became my neighbor, God was leading her family in a journey of loss, of change, of heartache, of loneliness...but ultimately, of a refining that usually comes against our will and by his goodness. This painting celebrates the anticipation of what God has done, what he is going to do, and the sweet new little life he is adding to their family as they make their home in the desert.**
Where...in your desert...are you learning to depend on Christ? Do find your soul satisfied in Him alone? Friends, we are His people, His plan will prevail...trust Him.
Because of grace,
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