Desert daylight is harsh and strong, blanching the landscape, bleeding the colors from the sand and sky. Only in the early morning and at dusk does the scene take on the scarlets and golds of the sun. Does it often seem that way with our lives? In the early hours of childhood, experiences seem so vivid, life’s joys are pure and bright. Even it’s little sorrows, though sharp, can often be kissed away. And at the other end of life, too, with the encroaching shadows, the things that matter seem to come back into focus. The superficial things—the clothes we wear, the food we eat, our trinkets and toys—seem more willing to loosen their hold on us. As our bodies begin to fail us and temporal hopes recede, we are forced back to simple pleasures, basic needs, and the growing certainty that our limited days should be filled with the things that matter most.
But in the middle years, the harsh realities of human experience seem to bleach the life out of us. The gale-force wind of adversity, emotional storms within us, the increasingly parched world around us, and the glaring searchlight of divine justice—these all combine to leave us gasping for something bigger than ourselves. Something secure to give us refuge from the incessantly changing winds. Something to harbor us, a haven where the inner storms somehow cannot reach us. A special kind of water, imported from a Better Land, that will slake our parched souls. And relief from the seemingly merciless rays of divine light that expose us, not for what people think we are, but for what we really are. How far must we search, how many mirages must disappoint us, how many burning steps across the heartless sandscape before we find such a place?
It is the testimony of the world that no such place exists. But, thank the Lord, it is the testimony of God Himself that there is a Person who exactly meets these longings of the wilderness pilgrim.
Among his many canvasses of the Messiah, the inspired word-painter Isaiah describes how it is possible to bring back the color to the wind-swept, storm-battered, desert-parched, sun-beaten soul: “And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land” (Isa. 32:2).
Reading the verse, I can feel the relief flooding in, washing over my spirit. Drink in those blessed words! An hiding place…a covert… rivers of water…the shadow of a great rock…. This Man of whom Isaiah speaks is absolutely everything we need for the pilgrim journey! There is protection and provision, sustenance and shade. He is the continuing security of a hiding place from the blazing sirocco, interposing Himself between us and its blistering, blinding heat. “A very present help,” He provides the ready availability of a covert when out of nowhere an untimely storm catches us, vulnerable and exposed. He slakes our thirst from a river that flows from Himself, our smitten Rock. And when in our weariness—weary perhaps with the hardness of the way, or worse still, the hardness of our own hearts—we drop to our knees in despair, we find the “Rock that followed them” through that “great and terrible wilderness” is still ready to provide the blessed shadow of Himself as our refuge.
Whatever else we may apply from this portrait of heaven’s lovely Man, let us take to our hearts three life-sustaining truths. First, it is obvious that the need is all ours; the provision is all in Him. Second, when feeling my soul is like a desert wasteland, I need to flee to Him, not from Him. He never yet turned one away, nor ever will. And finally, the journey is often long and hard, but it will surely bring us at last to a land where no storm sweeps its landscape, no weariness plagues its inhabitants. And the Man who traversed the desert with us will meet us on the last mile and bring us safely Home.
Written by J. B. Nicholson Jr