Living Our Consecrated Deserts (part two): Stepping Toward a Desert’s Heat

If you haven’t already, please take time to read Acts 6 & 7 as the background for our time together in God’s Word. Today’s scripture focus is Acts 8:1-26. Please read and return.

“Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ So he started out…” (Acts 8:1-5, 26-27).

There is one, and exactly only one, reason why I braved the ninety degree plus temperatures yesterday afternoon to find my pace upon the heated asphalt of a sweltering obedience.

Better health.

Seven laps of 3.2 miles worth of health. I thought about you and what I might say today in regards to desert living. I thought about how “doable” it all seemed on laps one and two. I thought about my sweat and my “want to” in laps three, four, and five. I thought about the sweet smell of a laundry’s drying that flooded my nostrils on lap six. And all I could think about on lap seven was lap eight—the cool down. And all I could think about on lap eight was what awaited me at the end.

Home.

Air condition. Bottled water. A bath to wash away the heat and the sweat that filled my flesh with the living proof that I had run in the desert. Not walked. Not crawled. Not bawling with a fit of my will. Simply running to the finish and knowing that with the finish, my heart is better for the obedience.

I am a desert dweller. I bet that some of you are, too.

Some deserts are divinely ascribed to us—designed and ordained for our feet. Some deserts we create through our chosen disobediences and willful sin. Some deserts we inherit—the parched remnants of another’s doing. Some deserts we choose because we know that with the choosing comes better health. Regardless of how we get there, desert dwelling is often our allowed portion, and such seasons can find roots in God’s consecration if we choose to walk them with his kingdom perspective.

Desert living is a vast concept, encompassing and all-consuming. The Bible is replete with its teaching because our spiritual history is a family tree filled with desert wanderers who walked its road—if not a literal pilgrimage, then pilgrimages of the soul.

Abraham and Sarah. Hagar. Moses. The Israelites. Joseph. Elijah. Gideon. David. John the Baptist. John the Beloved. Peter. The woman at the well. The woman with the issue of blood. The woman at Jesus’ feet. The woman at the end of a stone’s throw. Jesus, himself.

Indeed, God’s Word would not be complete without these desert dwellers and the stories of countless others who walked this earth with a thirst that would only be quenched by the living water from an eternal well. In many ways, we walk the same, and until we reach the shores of heaven, our steps will be soiled with the dust of a journey that was never intended to be our final.

Like the saints of Hebrews 11, our alien hearts echo with the longing for a distant promise…for a better country—a heavenly one where the heat and sand of a desert give way to the lush and green of a garden’s embrace. It is a good and rightful longing, and there are moments in my life when I have tasted a portion of its fulfillment. Still and yet, my flesh lingers. And as long as this flesh remains, the fullness of Eden’s return rests ahead. My next. My hope and my sure.

Thus, I am left to my current. There is good to be had in the here and now. There is life and balance between the extremes of a desert’s dry and a heaven’s wet. Psalm 33:18-19 speaks to this balance.

“But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death, and to keep them alive in famine.”

God doesn’t intend for us to simply wander into our next. He intends for us to live in our now. His eyes are on us because he longs to deliver us from death and to teach us how to live in our famine. Really live. How to walk it through and how to find an eternal abundance in the midst of our parched and hot and hard.

That is what this study is about. It is not about glorifying our deserts, or feeling sorry for ourselves, or looking for a way of escape from their confinement. It is about living within their fences and finding God’s purpose through our every step of faithful obedience. It is about finishing well, even when the finish involves a less than perfect run in temperatures that threaten a will’s resolve.

As so often the case with a wilderness walk, there are events that usually precede its embrace and that prime our wandering hearts with an unquenchable thirst. Philip was, perhaps, no different from us. His desert pilgrimage began long before his feet would walk the desert road that led to Gaza. He had every reason for his resolve to find a measure of weakness. Reasons like…

Philip was called to table service. Some would consider his a “less than” calling—a behind the scenes obedience that didn’t merit the glory of the stage. After all, the apostles would tend to the preaching of God’s Word. He would simply tend to the feeding of mouths. (Acts 6:2-5).

When have I come into a desert for such a similar reason?

Philip lost a treasured companion. Stephen’s death touched the heart of all who witnessed his passing. And while it may have bolstered their faith and resolve for the work ahead, it also left a gaping wound—a tearing of deep grief that always accompanies a deep loss. I am a woman who has known some deep losses, and thus I wonder,

When have I come into a desert for such a similar reason?

Philip was relocated—scattered and sent abroad to an unfamiliar and, sometimes, unwelcome place. Samaria. To the least of these he would travel. Perhaps, running for his life. Perhaps, alone and without clarity. Perhaps, reminiscent about the glory days instead of living with the current realities.

When have I come into a desert for such a similar reason?

Philip was overshadowed. When word spread about Philip’s faithful imparting of the Gospel in Samaria, his mentors showed up to bring the fullness of that Gospel by baptizing believers with the power of the Holy Spirit. And while scripture does not record the least hint of Philip’s regard in the matter, I am prone to my own feelings of insecurity with such situations. When others have the capacity to do more for Jesus than me, I am prone to my sandals and to my wandering.

I know that I have walked a desert or two for such a similar reason!

Preceding events—those life experiences leading up to the angel’s voice that would summon Philip to a desert walk. Perhaps these initial “tastes” of the desert prepared his heart for the obedience that would follow. Regardless of the location or situation, Philip was prepared to move his life forward in the direction of the heat. He knew that life could be found within the sands of an uncertain and famine-threatened tomorrow.

He knew that better health—heart health—would find its perfection, not in the cool and conditioned comfort of a usual, but rather in the hot and sweat of a divinely, hammered unusual. A consecrated run that would yield a faith worthy of a Father’s eyes, a heaven’s stage, and an eternal garden.

We can know a similar portion. In fact, we can know the fullness of that portion because it is our promised inheritance as children of the Most High God, and so I pray…

Ready my heart, Father, for the heat of the day. Keep my obedience in forward motion, and when I am tempted to stay in the cool of my current, remind me that an occasional desert run is good for the heart. Hammer me into my perfection, and when my quit screams loud, drown it out with the truth of what awaits me on the other side…Home. It’s where I am headed, Lord, and I am undone with the thought of walking Eden’s shores with you. Amen.

Copyright © June 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

A further pause…

~Ponder some preceding events that may have contributed to your most recent desert walk. Do they mirror any of the four mentioned above?

~Which scripture “desert story” has meant the most to you and why?

Feel free to offer your thoughts on these questions or any others that you may have regarding today’s reflection. I will post again late Monday. Shalom.