Through The Wilderness: Following Jesus in the 21st Century ~ Marlena Graves

Sharpening perceptions of reality and providing spiritual guidance for those in the crux of wilderness experiences. Substantial spiritual nourishment for those who know or sense that Christ is anything but shallow. Encouraging readers to radically (which to Christ is normal) serve God and others. The author is teaching herself and others to read the world through the lens of the gospel and to become active participants in the local and worldwide body of Christ.

Mar 12, 2011

God Offers Us Comfort in the Wilderness of Suffering and Difficulty

Comfort.

“The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing” (Isaiah 51:3-4).

When our souls are tragically ripped from us, when searing wilderness pain has us begging for death instead of life, God gently comforts us. When we’re in the midst of unimaginable pain, it may be hard for us to believe that God will comfort us, for our pain continues unabated. But God, unlike many others, doesn’t expect us to quickly snap out of pain-induced depression. And he doesn’t endorse well-meant but ill-timed Christian platitudes like, “God has a plan for all of this,” when it takes supernatural strength for us just to cope with a new day.

No. He knows we’re human—that we mourn and suffer and shake our fists in anger because of the seeming injustice of it all. He understands suffering. And when the pain is most tender, the Holy Spirit quietly makes us aware that God is sitting with us in the wilderness, and like a mother with a young child, God beckons us to lay our heads down in his lap so he can gently and lovingly stroke our foreheads.

At first we resist, sobbing, shaking, screaming, pounding our fists in hysterics, demanding answers, trying to make sense of it all. Like a young child, we lack the maturity to comprehend the meaning of the soothing answers God offers.

But as his love and kindness penetrate our fitful senses, our sobs and soul seizures cease. Slowly we begin to calm down. Again we bury our wet faces in his lap, using his robe to wipe away tears and runny noses. Although there’s been little change in our circumstances, we feel a slight but perceptible shift inside of us as we gaze into his face. Somehow we feel comforted even without having received satisfactory answers. In the wilderness, God sits with us as we absorb little doses of his comfort and peace, until we are strong enough to stand up on our own.

~ Marlena

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Read Old Books. They Expand Our Souls.

One excellent way to see how much our culture's passing weather patterns have influenced us is to read old books. If you recieve all your information from contemporary writers, Christian or secular, you will never perceive whole concepts that people in other generations could see. (For example, earlier generations of Christians perceived a power in sexual purity that eludes us completely; we can only fall back on "don'ts"). Every Christian should always have at his bedside at least one book that is at least fifty years old--the older the better.

Frederica Matthews-Greene