Pilgrimage (2 page)

Spiritual renewal is what I long for, too, as I begin this pilgrimage. I want to see the bigger picture of His plan and learn to accept His will in all things. I want to revitalize my prayer life, really listening to what He is saying to me and asking His help through these changes. Maybe I’ll be able to let go of my own will and face the changes in my life with joy and faith. That’s asking a lot for a two-week trip. But this is Israel—the stage on which the Old and New Testaments are set, a land where Scripture springs to life in three dimensions like a children’s pop-up book. Old friends from the Bible’s pages populate these sites, and the words of patriarchs and prophets take on new significance as I gaze at the same rivers
and mountains and lakes and deserts that they once viewed. In the landscape of Israel, I can visualize Jesus’ parables and teachings because the cues are all around me—sheep and rocks and city walls and olive trees. Each site I visit is a rich layer cake of history with archaeological ruins dating not only to the time of Christ, but all the way back to Abraham’s time. Since I will be “surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,” maybe—just maybe—by journey’s end I will be ready to “run with perseverance the race marked out” for me (Hebrews 12:1).

———

The tour bus has arrived, and the driver loads our luggage as our guide and my husband wait. I want to linger in the fading, golden light a moment longer, yet I’m eager to begin. We will start in the south—the Negev—then travel up through the central hill country to Jerusalem, and finally to the region of Galilee in the north. I will be exploring the land from south to north, the opposite way that Abraham explored it when he arrived in the Promised Land four thousand years ago. But it’s the direction that the Israelites traveled as they left behind a life of slavery in Egypt, ended their aimless desert wanderings, and arrived at last to reclaim their homeland and worship their God.

And so my journey begins in the Negev . . .

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” . . . So Abram left, as the Lord had told him . . . Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem . . . From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel . . . Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

Genesis 12:1, 4, 6, 8–9

A N
EW
P
RAYER
FOR
THE
J
OURNEY

Heavenly Father,

I praise You for Your vast, unending love, as high and wide as the skies I have just flown through. I confess that I have behaved like a whining child, ignoring all of the ways You have provided for me as a loving parent and complaining instead, wanting my own way, my own plans. Forgive me for allowing disappointment and loss to hinder my prayers and my relationship with You. Stand me on my feet again, Lord, and teach me how to walk on the paths You have chosen for me. Help me to accept Your comfort for my losses and Your will for the changes in my life. Teach me how to pray on this journey in a new and better way so that I can draw closer to You, the Source of all good things. Thank You for the new beginning we have in Christ Jesus and for this new beginning in my life.

Amen

2
The Wilderness of Zin

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Psalm 63:1

T
he sun blazes overhead in a cloudless sky. The expanse of dry, trackless land all around me resembles the surface of the moon. There are no boundaries in this wasteland, no landmarks on the barren earth, nothing but rocks and dirt and inhospitable peaks stretching to the horizon in every direction. Sweat rolls down my face and the back of my shirt. I guzzle water like a cartoon character.

My pilgrimage in Israel has begun in the Wilderness of Zin, a vast stretch of colorless desert south of Beersheba and the Dead Sea. The bleak scenery mirrors the state of my soul: parched and lifeless. Only a fool would venture into this
wilderness without a water supply and a guide who knows the way. No fool, I’m carrying two water bottles that slosh like lapping bloodhounds as I walk. And since I can barely discern the path we’re on from the rest of our surroundings, I stick very close to our tour guide. I follow him in faith, trusting that he knows the way.

After two hours of vigorous hiking with no end in sight, I have a newfound empathy for the Israelites, condemned by their unbelief to wander for forty years in this wilderness. I picture them plodding forward, one foot in front of the other, as hot and miserable as I am. But unlike me, the Israelites carried goat-hair tents and heavy clay cooking pots and bedding for the freezing nighttime temperatures. And they had their children with them—hordes of weary, whining children. No wonder Israel’s murmuring against Moses grew louder and louder: “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have brought us to the desert to die? . . . It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” (Exodus 14:11–12). I now understand their complaint from firsthand experience. I will be hiking here for only a few days; any longer and I might prefer a life of slavery, too.

I wonder if the fear and aversion we feel in these desert places spring from the fact that God created us to live in a garden. He provided everything we needed in lush, fertile Eden: water, food, and unhindered communion with Him. Out here, with no visible source of food or water, no shelter from the elements, it’s easy to succumb to the fear that we’ve been abandoned by God in this desolate place. Maybe that’s why we call the dry, parched times in our lives, when our soul withers and God seems very far away, “a wilderness experience.”

Such experiences often come at times of change and upheaval. When God wants to shake us free from our old habits and lead us into a new walk with Him, He sometimes begins with a desert journey. The Israelites left a life of slavery—and the leeks and melons and cucumbers of Egypt—and began their new life of freedom here in the desert. And even the modern nation of Israel began in the desert at the time of its founding in 1948. More than half of the acreage allotted to the Jews by the United Nations’ partition was in wilderness areas like this one. For bewildered immigrants from the Holocaust-torn cities of Europe, this vast emptiness where I’m now walking must have seemed like a strange new beginning. Talk about adapting to change!

God knows that we all need to be brought out to the desert from time to time to free us from our comfortable self-sufficiency. If He strips us of all our own resources, we just might learn to lean on Him. And to start praying again. With the luxuries of Egypt far behind them, Moses and the Israelites had no choice but to trust God, who graciously provided unlimited manna to feed them and fresh water from a rock to quench their thirst. The desert journey was supposed to build their faith for the years ahead when they would have to face enemies and conquer the Promised Land. If God could protect and sustain them here, they could trust Him anywhere. Maybe that’s what this desert time in my own life is supposed to accomplish. Maybe God wants me to stop grumbling and looking back at the past and learn to trust Him for my future.

The truth is, I really don’t want to walk by faith. Do any of us? I prefer comfort and safety, a well-stocked pantry and an abundant water supply, a map that shows exactly where I’m
going and how long it will take to get there—and I would like to choose the destination myself, thank you. But who needs God if I have all those things? Israel’s downfall didn’t come when they were homeless wanderers in the desert, but when they lived in cities where they were self-sufficient and well fed. God had warned them that, “When you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down . . . then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who . . . led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land” (Deuteronomy 8:12, 14–15). God must have known that I needed this walk beneath the relentless sun, through this dry, empty wasteland to remind me of my need for Him.

The sun has reached its peak and is beginning its descent toward the western horizon. My last water bottle is nearly empty. We have been hiking for miles with no idea where we are, trusting the guide to lead us out of here. I don’t think I can walk much farther. When I look ahead and see that our path is about to end at the foot of an imposing mountain ridge, towering above us, I want to sit down and cry. Will we have to retrace our steps through all those long, wearying miles in the barren desert? Our guide continues forward, straight toward the base of the cliff. The only way out appears to be straight up. Impossible.

We soon reach the dead end and sink down to rest on the bare ground, weary and discouraged. It wouldn’t take much for us to start hurling stones at our guide. But after letting us catch our breath, he prods us to our feet—and shows us a nearly invisible, hand-hewn staircase cut into the side of the cliff, complete with iron handholds. I think I know how the parched Israelites felt when Moses struck the barren rock
with his staff and water miraculously gushed out. I follow the guide up the treacherous cliff, one careful footstep at a time.

At last I reach the top, breathless from the climb, and see our air-conditioned tour bus waiting for us. As the other hikers snap photographs from this dizzying height, I wander off alone and savor the panoramic view of endless wilderness all around me. I remember the long, long way I have come. There is a beauty in this formidable place that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss. The wilderness has given me a sense of my own frailty and of my need for God. He seems very near to me now as I stand alone in the stark, pristine silence. Before today, I thought I faced a dead end in my life. But even though the path may still be hidden from my sight, even though the climb may be steep and treacherous, God truly does know the way.

It’s time to board the bus and be refreshed by the cool air. I sink into my seat for a much-deserved rest. I still face frightening changes and challenges back home, but I no longer fear the wilderness. It’s where I will learn, all over again, to trust God.

Helpless

After a bountiful meal and a good night’s rest, we’re hiking once again in the wilderness areas of southern Israel. Today we’ll explore the Ramon Crater, a smaller version of America’s Grand Canyon, but no less beautiful or awe-inspiring. We begin at the canyon’s rim, gazing down at the jagged slit in the earth’s crust, twenty-five miles long and five miles wide. I’m told that the rainbow layers of rock and dirt and sediment are a geologist’s paradise, complete with prehistoric fossils and
the remnants of an extinct volcano. The desolate, reddish-gold landscape is how I picture the surface of Mars—lifeless. But our guide assures us that this area is a nature reserve, home to wild ibex, gazelles, hyenas, and an animal I don’t wish to meet along the trail—leopards. We take photographs from this vantage point, inhale the clean desert air, enjoy the surprising breeze, and then board the bus to our hiking trail along the canyon’s bottom, five hundred feet below.

Soon I’m trekking through an alien landscape like something from a cheap science fiction film. The deeper we walk into the canyon and the farther we go from the bus, the more aware I become of my utter helplessness. I can’t build a shelter to escape from the heat in a place without trees. We’ve been warned that scorpions and vipers make their homes among the rocks. What appears to be an oasis is often a mirage. There is no place to turn to for help—and the emptiness goes on and on with no end in sight. All of my self-sufficiency vanishes in this hostile, unforgiving place.

Before leaving my hotel room this morning, I read Psalm 63—“A psalm of David when he was in the Desert of Judah.” David spent years living in desolate places like this while hiding from his enemy King Saul. How did he survive the doubt and discouragement he must have felt, the terrifying helplessness?

The psalm begins, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (v. 1). In other words, David was in a spiritual wilderness as well as a physical one. I imagine him walking a desolate trail like this one, hot and weary and discouraged, knowing that on the other side of the hill, Saul’s army is encamped with their weapons and provisions and water supplies. To David, the day that
the prophet Samuel poured oil on his head and anointed him as Israel’s king must have seemed like a fading dream, as disappointing as a mirage. How easy it is to doubt God’s promises when we’re weary and thirsty and afraid.

David combats his feelings of helplessness by looking back and remembering what he knows about God: “I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory” (v. 2). He recalls God’s great love for him, and even if David’s current circumstances seem as hopeless as this wasteland all around him, he doesn’t trust what he sees. It’s a mirage. God’s promises are the reality, and so David confidently says, “They who seek my life will be destroyed” (v. 9).

We know the end of the story—Saul and his armies were destroyed and David became king—so it’s easy to forget that when David wrote those words, he didn’t know if he would survive the desert, let alone become king of Israel. But he chose to trust God, and I can do the same. Instead of focusing on my current circumstances, I can look back and remember what I know about God, about how far He has brought me in this journey. I can recall His goodness and faithfulness to me in the past, the storms and dry places He has carried me through. I can look up into the endless desert sky and trust His love for me, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him” (Psalm 103:11). David trusted that his time in the desert would end one day, and so would his spiritual drought: “My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods,” he wrote. “I sing in the shadow of your wings” (Psalm 63:5, 7).