It can be hard for me to write when I cannot find a theme, and I have no inspiration. And I stand, or rather sit in front of the blank page on the computer screen and “break my head,” as we say in Hebrew: What in the world will I write about?
The feeling is one of dryness, a feeling that all the springs of creativity within me have disappeared. And this feeling is accompanied by both fear and stress. Have I nothing more to say? Is the story over?
But then I remember! I remember the desert!
It’s a place where it’s hard to survive. Where the sun beats down on your head. Where the body is weakened, and you feel as if you are in moment-to-moment survival mode.
And the moment the desert metaphor is revealed in my mind, and I feel the dryness right inside me, I recall that PRECISELY in this difficult place, if the heart is open and willing to hear and receive, and change, it is in these moments God is revealed to us. God addresses our hearts. And encourages us to keep going.
There in the wilderness God speaks to us (and how amazing that “desert” and “speak” are the same word in Hebrew – מדבר). Precisely there in the desolate desert when the ground is hard and scorching, where water is so scarce. Precisely there, God is revealed and gives us a drop, a caress of love, and helps us to understand, that the path continues and that we must continue to walk.
The physical desert, in which God was revealed to Israel’s great leaders, is a metaphor for this dry place, for the desert that is within us.
That does not mean we have become a wilderness. It just means we have to go deeper and go higher, in order that the inner spring flow forth again. In order that we again choose to reach the land of promise. The promise, despite its challenges, helps us to keep walking.
When this place is revealed to us, there is no doubt we are experiencing distilled knowledge.
As one who occasionally passes through these moments of dryness, I am then filled with this experiential knowledge that God can reveal Himself anytime and anyplace – in an exciting renewal of passion and creativity that bubble forth like fresh water.
Even if there are moments of dryness in life, they have a purpose. They bring us to the next step in our faith.
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