Sometimes during worship at church, I just spend some time looking around at people.
I watch the stories on people’s faces as they sing, and it ministers to me. This last Sunday, the worship team was singing a song about God’s love. Hands began to rise towards the ceiling as the song developed. I contemplated the words of the song, considering God’s great love. I knew I felt it– but I just wondered if there was anyone in the room that was struggling to believe it. I wondered if there was a person looking at the words on the screen and mouthing the lyrics, being colored with the flashing purple and orange lights and watching the smiling singers and feeling the joyful congregation push in on either side of them– all the while swallowing the numbness and frustration of their internal wilderness, questioning why their heart out of all of the others in the room seems content to be silent.
I think it’s okay to have been or be in this place; a place where you know God’s presence and love is all around you, but because your heart is so locked, so cold, so lost, so angry, or so complacent– nothing beautiful can even seem to seep in.
Sometimes these seasons are called a Wilderness Experience, based on the Israelites 40 years in the wilderness after fleeing Egypt. I remember back when I was in grade school and read the story of Moses and his battle to free the Israelites. I loved the story. Moses fights on God’s side, the plagues destroy the deserving, and finally– the people are free. And that’s where the movie’s happy ending rolls the credits.
But biblically, it’s another story. Keep reading, and you might be shocked to realize that these people who have ALREADY been mistreated are now also entering into a long walk through the desert; a forty year trek, to be exact. I remember reading this and thinking, how unfair! How wrong. How mean. They’ve been through enough. They should be walking into paradise, not more anguish!
Walking through wilderness isn’t just hard. It’s confusing. As we try to stay faithful and keep walking, we wonder where God’s love is. Does he see us? Does he not understand what we’ve been through? How do we see him as a loving God when it feels like he has purposefully dealt us a hand of hardship? Naturally, during these seasons we can nearly imagine the gates of heaven tightly shut as we project out voices up to God with no reply. His silence can turn from disappointing to painful. Even resentful. After all, loving gods are supposed to be loving all the time, right?
What if God’s love for us is not absent from us during these times, but the strongest?
As the Israelites traversed through the desert, I’m sure that they were ticked off at God. I would be. I’m almost certain that it was difficult for their hearts not to be hardened towards him. Sure, he got them out of Egypt, but for what? Views of sand and pangs of hunger? Reading on, we see that God is still present; he provides his people both food and water. But after a while, it’s not enough. People are questioning him, hurt by his lack of lavishness.
Sometimes God’s provision of love comes in such humble, scarce packages that we are left offended.
We feel like he’s left us empty-handed, empty-hearted.
I wonder if there was at all an Israelite who during those 40 years found any concept of goodness in that wilderness they endured. Did they ever get to a point where they were content with the barrenness? Did it refine them to a point where they were deeply humbled, accepting that it was enough to just have the strength to put one foot in front of the other, holding onto hope that God had something better on the other side? Were they ever able to sense God’s love in a deep way through the plain, same every day for so long, humble manna that fell from the sky?
“For the LORD your God has blessed you in all that you have done; He has known your wanderings through this great wilderness These forty years the LORD your God has been with you; you have not lacked a thing” (Deuteronomy 2:7).
As I stood on the outside wondering who around me was battling wilderness experience, I sensed a message from the Holy Spirit that God’s love is mysteriously and powerfully present in these silent seasons. In fact, I almost sensed that God’s love is actually strongest in these seasons.
Why might God’s love be strongest in our wilderness? Because we have nothing else.
Maybe that sounds unfair. It probably seems like unnecessary deprivation. At least, it does to me. Couldn’t I have just a little more, God? Would it be so bad to let things just be normal? How awful would it be to just let me have what I want? I’m so stuck focusing on the fact that he isn’t providing the ocean I’m asking for that I don’t notice the drink of water that would be just enough or more than what I need for that moment.
In my wilderness, God provides just enough “manna” to get my feet one in front of the other through the sand that still all looks the same. The same feelings, but he keeps me going. The same situation, but he keeps me going. The same answerless prayers, but he keeps me going. It’s a form of love that looks much less extravagant to my human eyes than what I want, but yet somehow, it’s a stronger, deeper, supernatural, quiet, mysterious love. Humbling in the deepest sense. No, there are no neon signs or rescue helicopters in sight. But the fact that he provides enough water from the rock, after time, becomes an act of lavish grace and kindness. Just enough of it.
Even in the wilderness, in the times that we despise it and try to escape it, he is present. And the presence is quiet, but it is still a form of love. It is simply a love that we cannot understand at the time. It is still strong, still powerful. It is in the wilderness that he watches us carefully, tenderly coming in with our just enough to keep us walking through.
And somehow, after a while, it looks like love.
