Stepping into the Wilderness

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Matthew 4:1-3

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’”

Dear friends,

It kinda feels like we’re all in a wilderness space right now, doesn’t it. Like we’re wandering in places where resources and consistency seem scarce. We’re weaving through bleak disappointment and unmet expectations in this wilderness space. I don’t know how long it will last or if we will all survive unscathed. I do know that no one leaves the wilderness the same way they came in. The wilderness changes a person. It forces you to grapple with what really matters and you may find yourself questioning who you are. It demands gritty determination to hold steady even while the excess gets stripped away from you. It coerces you to see past the questions to begin to see you as you truly are. 

The wilderness extorts identity because no longer are you insulated by everything and everyone around you. 

A few years back I found myself in a spiritual wilderness. It felt like a wasteland, to be honest. How I expected my life and ministry to turn out wasn’t happening. People all around me were leaving, unable to continue doing life together in the same ways as before. I felt fully abandoned, deserted by close friends while having to hold a crumbling church together with Jason. I wondered where God was or if God cared. This wilderness was not something I asked for or wanted. I didn’t feel lead by the Spirit. I felt unlovingly pushed, prodded, shoved into this season that lasted way longer than 40 days. 

That wilderness wasteland gave room for doubt to whisper in my ear, “If you really are…”. I began to question my ministry, my identity, my personhood, my value. I wondered who I really was and if anything I did mattered as my people left, one after the other. 

But it was there in that wilderness where I began to learn how desperately dependent I was on God. I learned to sink into such comforting and abiding Presence. I felt safe and held, seen and valued by the loving arms of God. I could sense God had come near and the wilderness allowed me to prepare room for God’s nearness. And it was in that lonely and vulnerable place where I began to accept my belovedness. I could finally see me as me. I saw me as God sees me. 

While the wilderness can be a harsh, desolate, desert land, the wilderness is often where vast sky boasts a palate of color mornings and evening. It’s where unique plants grace cracks in the ground. It’s where a rainstorm can cause super-blooms never seen before. The wilderness is quite beautiful when we have eyes to see.

One does not leave the wilderness the same as they stepped in. In the wilderness I experienced the nearness of God in a way I never had before, and it was quite beautiful. I long for that again this wilderness Advent.

May it be so for you.

With (love),

Bethany