The ‘wilderness’ can mean more than an arid, deserted place.  It can also be a place within where the hand of God wrestles with us to examine ourselves in the face of His holiness, justice and righteousness.

Naomi had moved from Bethlehem in Judah to a foreign land with her husband and two sons.  While there her two sons married wives from the country of Moab.  Her future for grandchildren was bright and filled with hope.

When her husband, Elimelech, passed away she still harbored hope that her two sons and their wives would provide and care for her.  They continued to live there for the next ten years; but, still no children to carry on the family name.  However, when both of her sons died, Naomi found herself alone in a foreign country with two widows of her sons and no hope for deliverance.

Naomi left for home, encouraging her two daughters-in-law to return to their people and try to start over.  Orpah left but Ruth would not go.  She insisted upon going with Naomi to her people because of her love for her mother-in-law.

When Naomi and Ruth returned to Israel she was greeted by friends who called her by her name which meant ‘pleasant.’  Instead, from now on, she insisted, “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.  I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me” (Ruth 1:20, NIV).   The hope for a family was gone and she was coming home to live off of the charity of others.

One of the things that happens when we are in the wilderness of suffering, sorrow or despair is that we are afraid to hope because we don’t want to be disappointed again.  But, it is during that waiting time that God does His greatest work in our hearts because we let go of the things we have trusted in the past and reach out in trust to Him.  It is that expectation that He will deliver us that opens the door for Him to finally fulfill his plan through our willing spirits.

When Naomi heard the experiences of Ruth in the care of a man named Boaz, she dared to hope that God was at work to bring about something great…and He was.  When Boaz and Ruth finally marry they give birth to a son and the story leaves us with a wonderful picture of Naomi with her grandson laying in her lap, allowing her to dream again about what God would bring about through this newborn son.

When Naomi saw the hand of God, she moved quickly to help Ruth walk through the door of His providence when it began to open.  This key is so important to our struggle in the wilderness.  Sometimes the loneliness and depression can blind us to the moving of God’s hand.  Even when we see His intervention our own pain can lead us to distrust our senses and steal defeat from the jaws of victory.  The key: when you see Him bringing about a good work, move quickly with certainty, trusting in Him to guide you through.

Little did Naomi know that her embers of hope would fan into flame as she rocked the grandfather of king David in her lap, adding one more critical link to the genealogy of  Christ Himself.

It is that hungering for God that sustains us in the midst of the wilderness as we learn to release those things that compete for our affections.  It is that longing for His appearing that causes us to notice His activity in the smallest details of life.  It is that joy that we realize when we see His plans unfold before us and we see the ways He has used our waiting to lead us to His revelation.

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.

Isaiah 40:28 (NIV)

I owe these insights and so much more to the writings of Larry Crabb in his book Shattered Dreams (2002), referred to me by Tim Woodroof during a very difficult time in my own wilderness.  Thanks.  <>< steve

You’ve probably felt the way I’m feeling right now: stomach in knots, scatterbrained, pressured, etc.  For me it comes with launching into something new that requires faith because, right now, the numbers don’t add up.  You are on that fulcrum between, on the one hand,  measured, reasonable action based upon careful planning.  On the other hand, you realize that there is a leap of faith, a launching into uncertainty and the impulsive decision to ‘Go!’ in spite of how you feel deep down.

When Moses gave his parting words to Joshua as he was about to take the mantle of leadership, he told him three times: “Be strong and courageous”  (Deuteronomy 31:6,7,23). Why? Because the Lord would be leading the way as he led the people of Israel.

When Joshua challenged the people of Israel to go forward into the land of promise, he uttered the same words three times: “Be strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:6,7,9) because the Lord was going to go before them.  Later, king David challenged Solomon with the same words (1 Chronicles 28:20).

I have a question.

When you are assured that God is going with you, that He is going before you and that He will be with you all of the way, why is it necessary to be strong and courageous?  If our confidence and assurance is in Him, why must we be strong and courageous.  Isn’t that what He is…strong and courageous…as He leads the way and we follow behind Him?

As I have contemplated this concept of being strong and courageous I have come to believe that it takes strength and courage to trust God to see us through.  Our natural inclination is to launch forth confidently knowing that we have the intestinal fortitude to face whatever challenge is ahead because we are ingenious, strong and disciplined.  This is what we usually mean when we tell each other to be strong and courageous.  “You can do it,” we often say, “I have confidence in you!”  This is also why we are often so nervous when starting something new: we don’t feel so strong and courageous in and of ourselves.

The challenge to be strong and courageous from God’s perspective, it seems to me, is that we be strong and courageous in our trust in His ability to see us through and so we get to work, trusting Him, placing our faith in Him and watching to see His hand at work.  Letting go of the controls, trusting Him and moving forward with confidence in His ability to bring good out of whatever may come is probably better termed, faith.  Putting our faith in Him modes not mean that we sit on our hands to watch Him do all of the work.  What it means is that we move forward with all our might trusting Him with the eventual outcome, anticipating another opportunity to watch Him at work.  Talk about strength and courage!

And so, as I sit here ready to sign up to lease an office space for my fledgling private practice, my stomach twists up as I choose to be strong and courageous to sign on the bottom line trusting Him to make the most of my faith walk as I look expectantly towards his guiding hand.

Be strong and courageous.

Listening is such a critical art that is habitually taken for granted in our world.  I love John Piper’s analysis of Proverbs 18:13: “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.”  John makes ten valuable observations that are fleshed out in his article entitled “Ten Reasons to Listen to Questions Before You Answer” that are worth copying here:

1. It is arrogant to answer before you hear.

2. It is rude to answer a half-asked question.

3. Not answering a question before you hear it honors and respects the person asking the question.

4. Careful listening to a question often reveals the the question has several layers and really more than one question.

5. A question sometimes reveals assumptions that you do not share.

6. Questions usually have attitudes as well as content.

7. Questions have context that you need to know.

8. Questions are made up of words. Words have meanings that are formed by a person’s experience and education.

9. Proverbs 18:13 says it is our ‘folly‘ to answer before we hear.  That is, it will make us a fool.

10. And finally Proverbs 18:13 says that it is our ‘shame‘ to answer before we hear.

I cannot help but wonder what kind of world it would be if we practiced this elegant principle of listening fully to each other in our daily interactions.  May God help us learn to be each other’s counselors and therapists as we practice the simple art of listening.

Lately I have been pondering the great mystery of friendship.

Solomon observed that God has “set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV).  As we transition through the cycles of life we all have an inner craving for things that are permanent.  At the same time, we all know that what we encounter in life is transient.  In the context of Solomon’s wisdom I do not believe that he was encouraged by this; probing this realization led only to frustration of the unknowable.

The fields we played in as children become parking lots or subdivisions.  Old cars that we love eventually become scrap metal for another generation of automobiles or steel for skyscrapers.  Great moments in time become distant memories that, perhaps, someone had the forethought to record in movies or photographs; but, those snapshots in time cheat us of the finer details of the senses remembered with a smile or a quiet tear.  We build memorials and museums to capture our history so that we will never forget; and then we forget.  We reenact historical events or dress in the time-period with the full awareness that we cannot re-live it.

In his book, The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis observed that it is a mistake to think that these moments in time are ends in themselves.  Behind each longing is a secret desire for ‘home’ buried deep within the human heart that we fill with the things of this world turning them into ‘dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.”  They are not the substance of eternity but, rather, whiffs of what is to come.

Perhaps no experience in life comes closer to illustrating this reality than friendship.  Certainly, acquaintances come and go, relationships wax and wane and partners engage and disengage.  Real friendships, however, are those that endure the relocations, the cycles of life and times of exhilaration and those of despair.  Found only among a select few in the average lifetime we treasure time together with our ‘best’ friends often in the form of marriage, shared experiences or enduring values.  True friendship is honest, confrontational, caring and intriguing.  As Solomon observed in Proverbs 27:17: “You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another.”  The whole of true friendship becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

When we bring our longing for eternity together with the wonders of friendship we are, on the one hand, reminded that this is transitional as well.  In the end, friends die and one remains to carry on alone.  The vow of “Till death do us part” knocks on the door to tell us, “It’s time.”  In the absence of the real presence of our friend we long for something greater, something to replace the chasm that opens wide within, to embrace something real, substantial, concrete.

Something Solomon only ‘whiffed’ became fully realized at the foot of the cross.  What a wonderful door that opened to the human heart!  To think that it is entirely possible for a friendship to stretch from our past into eternity creates an elasticity in life that mocks the grave and removes the sting of death (1 Corinthians 15:55).  “Forever friends” is more than a wistful placebo in the midst of our grief.  It is a present reality anchored in the promise of God Himself for those who share a physical and emotional friendship here on earth but, also, who have gathered around the foot of the cross to share a spiritual friendship in the blood of Christ that answers the cry of the human heart for home.