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“When all of our idols are taken away, all our securities and defense mechanisms, we find out who we really are.  We’re so little, so poor, so empty — sometimes, even so ugly.”  Richard Rohr from The Great Themes of Scripture.

The friar is talking about what happened to the Hebrews once they departed Egypt unified and apparently strong in their quest for deliverance into freedom!  The wilderness (the place where no one sees you spin to earn your spiritual legitimacy) only echos the sounds that we make, but no one else hears it.  There is a sound there that constantly washes you in white-noise.  It numbs until you hear nothing but your own heartbeat.  You won’t notice it with only a short visit.  A vacation, a day trip, a frolic only allows for you to see beauty of what you can only process in your shallowness.  It takes years for the desert to do it’s work on you.  For Israel, the number was close to 40.  The temptation is to take yourself out of the heat and barrenness.  Nothing creates a thirst for simple fruitfulness, like the endless cravings of barrenness.  That is when we begin to see what is on the inside of “me”.  The stripping has begun, the fig leaf has fallen and the real begins to creep out from behind all our grand illusions and empty projections.

This isn’t theory to me.  It feels like a lifetime ago, but I’ve lived in the wilderness.  It was necessary and I will be forever grateful for His process in my life.  He knew the preparation that I needed for the next step of the journey.  Sometimes being stripped in the desert feels like abandonment or divine neglect.  It’s not.  It’s on purpose.  But, you’ll have to forge your mind against the devil’s attempt to bait you with self-pity and rescue.  There are whispers from the throne that you’ll never hear until you can still your heart and mind in the solitude of wilderness.  There is a promised land, but will you allow the desert to do its work so you can really see it?

This is not a broad stroke that applies to everyone.  It could be, but not all are willing to risk this kind of helpless vulnerability.  I know me and I would have never voluntarily enlisted.  I was drafted for the desert.  I could have never imagined the ways the He would reveal himself.  There was some green in the cracks and moisture in the clay.  He was there all along.

-MDP-