Rejoicing in the Desert

Life is full of peaks (good times) and valleys (not so good times). Sometimes you're in the wetlands (nothing's wilting), sometimes you're in the desert (dried, cracked, and lonely). Sometimes we look around and we are blinded by the sun (seeing our blessings). Other times, we complain about the clouds (low times). We think we have a friend, only to find we have a friend for "fair weather", but not while we're in the desert. I was watching the news the other day and coverage on the drought in the midwest came on. The bleak picture for the farmers there was a dried up crop and fields that look like desert land, not rich farmland. It's great that some (more well off) farmers can go out and purchase an irrigation system, but those who are depending on those crops for their livelihood can only pray for that kind of hope. I've always thought the world was unfair, and it is. It's not meant to be fair. It's life. That's why we can't depend on the world. We can't depend on the weather. We can't depend on people (at least most of them, in my opinion). Stay with me, I do have a point coming soon. I was awake at 4:30am this morning with those familiar racing negative thoughts of mine. I began to pray and speak God's promises to me over them. While lately I have "felt" defeated, I have "felt" rejected, I have "felt" let down, I have "felt" discouraged and disappointed and all of those "dis" thoughts that go along with it, the Truth says I am not. I am not any of the things that I may negatively think I am, and I am tired of the enemy working so hard to take me down. I thought about those pictures on TV of the struggling farmer's field, and I remembered the Israelites wandering in the desert for not one summer, but for 40 years! I paused for a minute, and something profound came to my mind. A statement that truthfully, I'm not clever enough to have thought it up myself. I've never heard it before, and it was this: "What you see as the desert, God sees as His workshop." That was it. No other details. In that simple statement, I realized that even as I walk the desert, I'm not walking it alone. God may be letting me wander a bit, only to teach me something. He doesn't allow trials without a way out, and my desert has a way out. That statement coming to me was what I call a break in the clouds. I was letting my defeat drive me emotionally, spiritually, physically. I was convincing myself of all kinds of counterproductive things. Have my circumstances changed? No. But my attitude is changing, thanks to God and His wisdom. You are never alone. Whether you're wilting, feeling like you don't have a friend, you gained all your weight back, you lost your church, maybe losing something else. Whatever it is, God will stand in for all of the things you "lose", and He will make them better. His time, His way, His desert, His child. You.