The Desert

In Job, after Job’s three friends rebuke him and tell him to lay down his pride, another younger man stands up and speaks. He was a man that understood who God was and who he was. Elihu says a lot of good things from chapter 32 to 37, but he speaks about how God speaks to man. This is what he says.

‘For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep fails on men, while they slumber on their beds, then he opens the ears of men and terrifies them with warnings, that he may turn man aside from his deed and conceal pride before man. Man is also rebuked with pain on his bed and with continual strife in his bones, so that his life loathes bread, and his appetite the choicest food. His flesh is so wasted away that it cannot be seen, and his bones that were not seen stick out. His soul draws near the pit, and his life to those who bring death.’  -Job 32:14-22

I realize that this is kind of obscure, but did you hear what Elihu said? He says that God speaks through dreams/visions and through our trials/pains. Both are meant to bring us to repentance and for us to learn about the character and nature of God through. Elihu goes on to say, ‘God thunders wondrously with His voice; He does great things that we cannot comprehend.’ This makes me feel safe, even when I don’t understand. This makes me quit questioning in the desert and trust that God wants me there for a time.

In Jonah, which to my understanding is a very poetic book with lots of rhyme and word-play in Hebrew, it references Jonah going down multiple times, aka going into the desert – that place in our lives that God uses to teach us that He is all we need.

‘Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD and went down to Joppa…But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship…So the men picked up Jonah hurled him into the sea…Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city…’

Jonah was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, although the LORD surely knew what Jonah was doing and was working it out for His Glory all along. God surely used ‘the desert’ in Jonah’s life. After the men on the boat threw Jonah in, the waters calmed immediately, ‘then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.’ Once God called Jonah the second time to go to Nineveh, Jonah responded in obedience, ‘and the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.’ Even Jonah while in ‘the desert’, aka the belly of the fish, knew that God was in control.

‘I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me, all Your waves and your billows past over me. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet You brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to You; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!’   -  Jonah 2:2-3,6,8-9

The desert is a terrible place that no sane person should desire, but I am beginning to see that God wants us in the desert so that He might teach us that He is all we need. The desert is a severe mercy, but mercy nonetheless.

Let us hold fast to the hope we profess even in the desert.