I love to go hiking. But if the route is not clearly marked, if it is unfamiliar to me or if there is no one I trust next to me, I get a feeling of being lost. I want to know the direction and final destination. A fun trip can quickly turn into a troublesome one if there is no clear understanding of where you are going and what awaits you on the road.
The last two years have been like a route that I don’t trust. I felt like I was wandering aimlessly, waiting and desperately trying to find some direction. During this time, we all over the world have experienced many psychological traumas – large and small. We have lost jobs, missed milestones in life and mourned the loss of loved ones. I had the feeling that the ideal picture of the life that I hoped to have in my early 20s, which I had imagined a long time ago, had simply dissolved into the realities of today’s events. Even though there is already a sense of a gradual return to normality, we still have a lot to go through, especially in the context of the ongoing global crisis. And it’s possible you’re feeling the same way as I do – anxious and a little unfocused in life.
The desert is a period in my life when I feel especially lost.
I have found the metaphor of “passing through the desert” rather than a description of our current state to be strangely reassuring. It is a familiar image to us, the Jewish people, that provides a visual representation of our shared historical experience. The dictionary definition of a desert is “a space or region that is uncultivated and uninhabited by people.”1 For me, the desert is a period of my life when I feel especially lost, isolated and depressed. The desert is unpleasant and uncomfortable, but I have found that it is during such periods of life that I experience a special personal growth that would not have occurred otherwise. Here are six truths I discovered while walking through the desert.
1. The desert is not empty
Through all the disappointments and fears that have befallen us over the past two years, I have come to the conclusion that the desert is not just a way to punish us or inflict more pain. It has a purpose. As the late Rachel Held Evans said, “Whenever Scripture takes us into the wilderness, it is usually not the barren wasteland it appears to be.”2 The wilderness is indeed empty, but not devoid of God’s design.
When our forefathers and foremothers fled Egypt, their initial sense of relief almost immediately turned into anxiety (and drama). “And they said to Moses: “Are there no tombs in Egypt, that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What did you do to us by bringing us out of Egypt? …For it is better for us to be in bondage to the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (Exodus 14:11-12). We tend to want to be anywhere but the desert, even if it means romanticizing the past or the future.
I am sure that after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, it was extremely difficult for the Israelites to continue to believe that they would ever make it to the Promised Land. And, frankly, sometimes it seems to me that the pandemic and now the war last no less. But the desert is not just a place through which our journey passes – it is a destination in itself. There is something we have to learn right there in the middle of the desert.
2. In the wilderness, God is always with His people
Looking back at the history of our ancestors, I understand that during the desert times, the closeness of God to them increased many times over. Jonathan Stein put it this way: “In the later Jewish mind, these wandering years are remembered as an ideal time when, despite the struggle for physical survival, we were especially close to God.”3
Being in the wilderness was like the experience of a baby in a mother’s womb for us in terms of developing an incredibly close intimacy with God. He caressed us, literally fed us with a spoon. The strongest divine presence was physically felt in a simply unique way: “The Lord walked before them in the daytime in a pillar of cloud, showing them the way, and at night in a pillar of fire, shining on them, so that they could go day and night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from the presence of the people” (Exodus 13:21-22).
Sometimes it is in times of pain, need and fear that I feel closer to God than ever.
It was at this time that God made a covenant with our ancestors, and therefore with us. In an incredible show of intimacy and fidelity, God sealed our relationship with Him at Mount Sinai. It reminds me that sometimes in times of pain, need and fear, I feel even closer to God than ever.
3. God Provides Everything We Need in the Wilderness
When problems arise, we are first drawn to find our own solution – we like to trust what we see. That’s why Israel made the golden calf. This is why we tend to base our confidence and sense of security on statistics and headlines. But Moses challenged the people (and us) when he said, “Don’t be afraid, stand still and you will see the salvation of the Lord which He will do, for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again; The Lord will fight for you and you be at peace” (Exodus 14:13-14).
This can be extremely difficult to do. But God proved His power to our ancestors time and time again. In the wilderness, where few living creatures can survive, He miraculously provided for an entire nation. He parted the waters of the sea and they fled from Pharaoh on dry land. He fed them manna from heaven for decades. He literally drew fresh water from the rock for them.
Being in the desert, we tend to immediately switch to thinking of poverty and to panic: “What if it is not enough for me?” (for example: March 2020, even the last roll of toilet paper was sold out). The desert exposes our insides and makes us vulnerable. It forces us to recognize that we have no control over everything and are completely dependent on God. And it is at such moments that the Lord does the best of His works. And His daily bread is not scarce.
In Deuteronomy, Israel reflects on their time in the wilderness. Looking back, they have the opportunity to see how much more they gained in the desert than they lost. Moses tells Israel, “And in this wilderness, where you saw the Lord your God bear you, as a man bears his son” (Deuteronomy 1:31). In the wilderness, God strengthens our hope for His full provision, which we will not lose even after we leave the wilderness.
4. The desert clarifies our goals
It is our natural inclination to follow the path of least resistance, but it is desert periods that develop our character. The emptiness of the desert can become the space that we need to clarify what is really important in our lives.
At Mount Sinai, God established a relationship with His people, but after they leave, their relationship with God is continually tested, strengthened, and matured. It is in their wanderings that they are forced to face their own hesitations in order to learn to trust and listen to God. Daniel Nevins says that the desert “brings to the surface all the flaws of human character, but there they learn to discern the voice of God and come to realize their national mission.”4 Bemidbar (desert) was the period in the life of Israel when they established their identity and their destiny. In preparing Moses to one day lead His people, God led him to a burning bush in the wilderness and it was there that He strengthened him for this difficult mission. Difficult life circumstances sharpen our self-awareness and clarify our further life path.
The wilderness of pandemic and war brought me many disappointments and turned everything upside down – in the midst of all this, I managed to finish school, move to another country and then drive through this whole country alone. At that time it was dreary and oh, how difficult. But looking back, I see how those experiences shaped my character, revealed what was most important to me and helped me to define my path.
5. The desert shows us our anchors
The desert is a challenge. We can see mirages in it, which in fact do not exist, because there are no well-known landmarks that helped us before. Our anxiety resulting from disorientation and isolation can make us weak. The desert challenges even our self-perception.
Yeshua’s experience in the wilderness was no exception. He faced the harshest version of the desert: wandering for 40 days and 40 nights without food, alone with temptations directly from the devil, who tried to tempt him with food, power and glory. To each of his suggestions, Yeshua responded with simple truths from the Hebrew Scriptures. In the wilderness, He held fast to the truths of our ancient texts and these simple truths literally carried Him through it.
When all else fails, the truths from the Tanakh (Old Testament), hidden in the far corners of our minds, give us a foothold. Rabbinic teachings often use the desert as an analogy for Torah study: “As soon as a person empties himself of everything, like a desert, the Torah is given to him as a gift [mattana]” (Nedarim 55a: 9). Growing in the knowledge of God and becoming rooted in the truth of who He is keeps us going through difficult times. It is the most foundational and personality-forming tool we have.
6. The desert shows us the value of community
The desert forces us to resist our own weaknesses and to do this, learn to rely on God and a community of like-minded people. Between the Israelites in the wilderness there was a close community in everything – both good and bad. The shared experience allowed them to mourn and rejoice together. It is simply amazing who you will not meet on your way, passing through the desert and how relationships with those whom you did not even think about before are suddenly strengthened.
But Hagar’s experience in the wilderness was quite the opposite. There was absolutely no one with her. Her story in brief is as follows: she became pregnant, she was kicked out of her house and driven into the desert. She did not have a community to rely on, but God heard her prayers and saw her at her most difficult moment. She learned more about the character of the Lord and relied on Him in everything: “You are the God who sees me” (Genesis 16:13). There was life for her in the desert, because God was present in that place. Whether we are sharing a desert with someone or traversing this desolated land alone, God is always there.
Hagar and the Israelites who survived the Exodus were not the only ones who had a life-changing desert experience and this gives us a connection to our ancestors and our people who have gone through it all before. I think of all those who, as the Tanakh narrates, were forced to leave their home: Esther, Daniel, Ruth, Abraham and many others. I think of David who fled from the hand of Saul and found shelter and water in the wilderness of Ein Gedi. I think of the millions of Jews throughout our history who have had to flee persecution in their home countries. I think about today’s harsh desert world, in which my peers and I are trying to navigate so as not to get lost. But I am absolutely sure that this will help us grow, learn and prosper, because God is present in the wilderness – near, at arm’s length, ready to provide us with everything we need again and again.
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Notes:
Merriam-Webster Explanatory Dictionary. Wilderness: Definition and Meaning of the Word, accessed 14 February 2022, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wilderness.
Evans Rachel Held, Chu Jeff. Sincere faith. New York: HarperOne, 2021, p. 135.
Stein Jonathan. In desert. ReformJudaism.org accessed 14 February 2022, https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/wilderness.
Nevins Daniel. The desert speaks. Jewish Theological Seminary, accessed 14 February 2022, https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/the-wilderness-speaks/.