Go West, Young Man

August 30, 2011

I just returned from a trip to Colorado Springs, Co this past week. I do have to say that the mountains are a beautiful sight to see. I was in Colorado for a conference with other new workers in the C&MA. The conference was refreshing to say the least and it truly helped me see the bigger picture of what the C&MA is all about. I got to meet some fantastic people that have a real heart for the lord. Their love for God was so palpable during our conversations that it was hard not to be awed by the way God is working in their lives. But conference ramblings aside, (I could go on for a long time about how great it was) I was inspired by something I saw while out in Colorado.

Now it would be cliche for me to write about how inspiring it was to wake up to see the Rockies every morning so I posted a picture of my hotel room view to satisfy your appetite for majestic scenery. Instead I want to talk about something else that inspired me while I was at the foot of the mountains.

Flying into Colorado Springs I expected to see rolling hills that lead up to pine tree covered mountains, lots of rivers and lush green land. Maybe I was jaded by the image of CO from playing Oregon Trail in fourth grade. I expected something different than what I did see that day. Instead of green hills I saw, what looked from the airplane, to be flat desert land. When we landed it felt like a desert, the air was dry, the ground was dry, and not much looked like the green hills from home in central NY. Now I must confess, I have never traveled much, and I have never been to a real desert (you know, the ones with sand dunes and cacti) but I feel like this was fairly close, I did after all see a cactus growing in someones garden in their front yard.

But what all this dry ground made me think of was of my studies on spiritual disciplines. It is hard for one to study spiritual disciplines without coming across stories about the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Women and Men who left the civilized world to seek out simple lives in the solitude one can only find in the desert. I am not confused as to why they chose the desert of all places to seclude themselves to, they chose the desert because it is one of those places on earth where a reliance on God is completely necessary. Few resources are found in the desert, and the ones that are found there are precious. Everything that was given by God in those places must have been a precious gift.

It makes me think of those dry moments in our own lives. The desert moments where we feel like God is far away, and our lives feel dry. I think it is those moments when we must continue to press into God, truly seek God. I am constantly struck by Psalm 88. At first glance it is easy to have questions about how something so unsettling could be included in the scriptures. After all, aren’t all psalms supposed to be happy and uplifting?

When I read Psalm 88 I picture a man whose life is in the desert, a dry place void of the living water that Christ offers us John 4 but what I see in Psalm 88 is not someone who does not want the water but, nor do I see a someone who is not seeking the water. I see someone who both longs for the water and is searching for it. I don’t know the outcome of what happened to the psalmist who wrote Psalm 88, but I do see the bigger picture framed by the scripture. I do know that Psalm 88 is not the end of the Psalms, and that the very next Psalm begins with a turnaround from the mood of Psalm 88. If Psalm 88 is spoken from of one who is seeking God and his love, then Psalm 89 is spoken from one who has found both of those.

Desert times are not void of good, however bad they may feel as we walk through them, but know that many have walked through the desert before us. And those that made it out of the desert found God was with them the entire time, and they were strengthened by their time in the desert. Perhaps we to should be more like the Desert Mothers and Fathers, and intentionally seek out the desert so that we may grow in our faith. Perhaps we will come out with a greater appreciation for the Water we receive at the end of our journey, and a greater longing to share that Water.

-MJM