Fall, Winter, Spring and... Desert?

”How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.”

Opening my eyes, I’ve never felt more thought about. I am surrounded by sand. Everywhere I look, dunes rise to meet my gaze, daunting, daring, imposing. I am on a journey. This journey will not take me over mountain, river, and sea. My journey is one through the desert.

I’ve never felt less in my entire life. Not that I feel insignificant, it’s that I don’t feel. The “Jesus high” is gone and has been replaced by a hunger, a gnawing, and a thirst. There is little food in this desert and even less water. Despite all this, there is a fullness.

I’ve never known and been content to simply know without feeling. There always had to be something to back what I knew. Haha Unfortunately, the knowledge was somehow reinforced by emotions. That doesn’t always work out I’ve discovered.

I have been drawn into the desert by Someone with much greater plans than I could ever fathom. “Therefore, I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.” His voice whispers to me as the wind and other times paralyzes me as in a sand storm. I understand nothing and have no plan. I am walking, pushing through the many grains that are infinitesimal in comparison to my Lover’s thoughts for me.

I have no complaints, no objections. I am in the desert. What is complaining going to do about that? I will forge through this sand with more than determination. I will crest every dune more exuberant than the one before because I am that much closer to being overwhelmed and overtaken by a Love so powerful and incapacitating, it changes the hardest hearts from stone to liquid fire.

I know I am not alone in this desert.

I’ve heard the “Footprints in the Sand” story so many times and I’ve come to realize that mine is so very different from this. There is one set of footprints, not because I’m being carried, but because someone has treaded here before me. There is someone that is leading me, beckoning me, pulling me through the desert with nothing more than an example to follow.

And I so I enter further into the desert, welcoming its desolate, but promising embrace.

“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and future.’”