That moment, that time when I found myself out in the wilderness, not knowing how long it will take to cross, or if I am even on the shortest route to crossing, or honestly, if I’ll ever even find my way out.
That time when the sounds of the wilderness were so maddeningly loud I couldn’t bear it any longer. The deafening howls of this wasteland, the winds, the sand, the dirt, the animals, the nothingness, the plain.
And even if all that isn’t there, if it’s a time when the wasteland is quiet and you could hear a pin drop, then that’s the maddening part about it: you could hear a pin drop, and you hear every single one of your destructive thoughts and the never-ending tossing and turning and toing and froing and please, any other sound than the sound of my mind.
All these sounds, the sounds of the quiet wasteland and the howls of the lostness and wilderness, through them all, you aren’t able to hear, even if some good comes your way.
You know that somehow, God is here. Somehow, He will lead you through this. But also, you really don’t know if He’s here. You can’t see Him, can’t hear Him, can’t feel Him. He might as well not be here.
You want to believe that He is, but even that proves difficult because the confusion binds you and you’re not able to bring yourself there.
So you drop to your knees, defeated, praying that God is here, that Jesus had gotten to know that wilderness part so well back when He was there (Matthew 4) that He will be able to find you and lead you out and through it all, be glorified.
You muster up any faith you have and utter that one prayer: Bring me through this, oh Lord. Let me hold on to what little faith I have right now.
And once you’re on the outer edges of that wilderness, and the howls and sounds become quieter and you’re able to hear a little better and see a little more, You’ll see He was there with you this entire time, He was right beside you and held your hand and never let go.
I know, you might not want to hear this. I know, it’s hard. I know, it doesn’t make sense.
But if this life isn’t about you, if this life isn’t about the glory you receive, but about Him, and the glory He receives, then He will lead you out of the wilderness, and through that, He will be most glorified.
He will be most glorified, when I’m lost and found in the wilderness.
– Martha
Trust me. It’s true.
Or if not me, then maybe the Bible?
Because there was a man, Jacob, and he was out in the wilderness, too. Literally. And “[God] found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.” (ESV Deuteronomy 32:10)
God went and found Jacob in the wilderness. And He cared for him.
And didn’t Jesus promise that He will always be with us? (Matthew 28:20). So if He is always with us, then He is with us even if we’re in the wilderness, right?
Honestly, I am mostly writing this so that I will remember when I am back in that wilderness, because I forget. The piercing sounds seem to somehow pierce my brain and cut some of the connections that usually seem so easy and natural.
I know that in the wilderness, when I’m lost and down and broken and don’t know how to move forward, then He will find me, He will lift me up, He will heal me and redeem me and take me by my hand and show me the way and through all of that. And exactly because I can do nothing, He will be most glorified.
He will be most glorified, when I’m lost and found in the wilderness.
