Wondering in the Wilderness
Nine years ago and 6,000 miles away, a family of five is realising something is wrong with their car.
They had left the skyscrapers of Bangkok early that morning. Now, they are about six hours deep into the drive to Chiang Mai and four things have happened. First, the buildings got shorter. The grass, and then the shadows got longer. Then, the car started to leak.
It is 6pm and the car has slowed to a crawl. The land is completely flat in every direction to the edge of the horizon. Flat and empty.
Let’s leave them there – just for now.
A wilderness is a ‘neglected or abandoned area’. It is also a term used to describe seasons in our lives where we experience extreme hardship. They can be times of waiting. They can be times where God feels distant. They can also be times of deep growth.
In the wilderness, our leafy coverings die. Whether they are success in our jobs or security in our relationships, they wither and leave us bare. But if we surrender to God’s will in the wilderness, he can access our exposed roots and bring deep transformation and healing. This vision of God fulfilling his purposes for us in times of suffering is a profoundly biblical concept. Let’s take a quick dive into some ancient Hebrew grammar…
In the Hebrew language, prefixes are often attached to verbs to form them as nouns and indicate a relationship with places or people. For example, the prefix ‘M’ usually means ‘the place of’, so ‘Matus’ is ‘the place of flying’. You or I would call that a plane.
Now, the term for ‘wilderness’ is ‘Midbar’. Let’s break that down. The ‘M’ indicates ‘the place of’ and here the root verb relates to ‘bringing order’. It is similar to the term for ‘words’ (‘Debar’ which indicates ‘bringing order out of chaotic letters’) and for ‘honeybee’ (‘Deborah’ which indicates bringing orderly honeycombs out of chaotic nature).
The ‘Midbar’ wilderness of the Bible is the place where God brings order in our lives.
In Numbers 32:13 The Lord led Israel out into the wilderness so they can learn obedience and trust. Those 40 years of hardship and wandering exposed the rot of grumbling in the roots of their faith, allowing God to speak powerfully into their identity as his people. This period was entirely necessary before they could be led into the promise land.
When I finished my A-Levels, I experienced a time of waiting in the wilderness with no idea what I would do next. I believe the Lord allowed me to stay in that deeply uncomfortable place because it exposed the rot of self-reliance in my roots. He knew I needed to face the bitter pain of starting to bring that to the cross before I could move into what he had for me next.
We can believe that even in our darkest times, our heavenly Father is working all things for our good. But how can we bear up under the agony of fear, loss and waiting? The Bible provides us with a perfect model for how to do well in the wilderness.
In Mark 1:12, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the ‘Midbar’. However, in the verse directly before, he is being affirmed by the audible voice of God as ‘my Son, whom I love’. It is from this posture of sonship that Jesus faces a period of testing and isolation.
When suffering drives us to the brink of who we are, all we can do is remember whose we are. Our identity as God’s beloved children can let us embrace what he is doing in our lives in the confidence that we are never alone and never abandoned.
So we return to the family, the car that is unmistakably slowing and the paddy field stretching as far as the eye can see. It was my eight-year-old sister who piped up and broke the heavy silence.
‘This is going to be very character building. Let’s pray.’
It wasn’t until we were sat in front of a ramshackle garage (that miraculously sprung almost out of nowhere) watching our car being disassembled that I found myself thinking about what she had said. Sometimes it takes a barren expanse to reveal cracks in our engine. When the Lord leads us into the wilderness, he is often giving us the opportunity to let him fix us for the journey ahead.
Let’s be people who, when we find ourselves in the wilderness, cling to God. May he meet us in our weakness and bring his order to our hearts.
Amelia Brookes is on a Onelife internship.