The Moment We Wake From the Wilderness

Isaiah 35: ‘The desert and the parched land will be glad, the wilderness will rejoice and blossom, water will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert, the burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground a bubbling spring and in the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds will grow.’

As 2022 lies before us and we find ourselves emerging from another year tainted by the pandemic, it is easy to feel lost in the wilderness of this challenging season. We have individually, nationally and globally traversed a time of crisis and questioning. And yet, biblically, the wilderness is an utterly essential chapter in the story of discipleship and growth. Rarely do God’s people arrive at the promised land without first journeying through unchartered, uncomfortable territories.

Throughout scripture, the wilderness is perhaps one of the most profound landscapes in which Jesus encounters the Father. It is in the context of the wilderness that Jesus is tested, that the enemy is denied, God’s promises are spoken and human flourishing is foretold. In fact, so significant are these times that almost every wilderness journey in scripture culminates in a renaming; the formal establishing of new identity. As author Rachel Held Evans reminds us, ‘the wilderness, by design, disorients… it has a way of forcing the point, of bringing to the surface whatever fears, questions, and struggles hide within’. It is in the desert lands that our eyes, in desperation, return to their creator and our souls are reoriented on the axis of our God-given identities. And yet, this productive and profound revelation requires our attention and action. The wilderness serves to shape us, but it relies on our turning to the Father in the midst of the mess, participating in and responding to his activity.

Jesus models this wilderness teaching when challenged by Satan in the desert. He is questioned, ‘if you are the son of God, tell these stones to become bread’. While Satan’s question appears to be situated in the physical world, if we listen closely, we hear the enemy’s voice challenging the very centre of Jesus’ identity with the familiar question: are you who you say you are? How many times in the past 18 months have we questioned the characteristics and callings that God has spoken over us, calling into question what were once firmly known qualities of our deepest selves? ‘If’ I am called to be a teacher, what does this look like now schools are closed, ‘if’ I was created to perform, how can I fulfil this in isolation, ‘if’ God’s will for me is to dance, to preach, to write, to care for my family, to witness to my colleagues, to travel, to lead… how do I fulfil this calling in a world that is locked-down and isolated? But Jesus is not shaken by Satan’s identity test, instead he responds to the enemy’s challenge by returning to what he knows ‘is written’. He leans into the Word.

Breathed by the Father, Jesus recounts the truth: ‘man shall not live on bread alone’. Instead of consuming the enemy’s attempts to uproot his identity, Jesus presses into scripture’s unshakeable truth. He denies the enemy’s lies and pursues the promises of the Father. For many of us, the wilderness of the pandemic has looked like a question of identity, a violent shaking to the very foundations of who we are. So in this moment of transition, let us mirror Jesus’ example, press into the truths of scripture, trust in the promises God has spoken and believe in the identities he first breathed into life.

Alluring Jesus with ‘all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour’, Satan continues to offer up an instant reward in exchange for Jesus bowing his knee in worship. But Jesus again rejects the temptation of the instant for the truth of his eternal inheritance; he turns from the immediate glory of earthly gratification and gazes towards heavenly treasures. In this same way, the wilderness can so often restrict our outlooks, obscuring God’s biggest plans for our lives with the immediate barriers we see ahead. But as pastor Jonathon Martin reminds us, ‘all the good stuff happens in the obscurity’. Society teaches us that fulfilment lies in the destination; in the job or the degree, the promotion or pay rise, the relationship or purchase, the end of lockdowns, the vaccine, the cure, and yet this is not what scripture teaches us. Indeed, so many of the bible’s revelations take place, not in the eagerness of the starting blocks, or the triumph of the finish line, but in the bewildering spaces between.

So, in the wake of the new year, as we continue to navigate these challenging and unfamiliar times, let us pay attention to God’s activity. Let us lean into scripture as Jesus so perfectly models, fixing our eyes on him, and in this moment of transition, take notice of where, from the dry ground, the grass might just be beginning to grow.