Pilgrimage (5 page)

I notice that these sheep aren’t wandering aimlessly. The shepherd seems to know where he is taking them. But why is he dragging them through such worthless pastureland with nothing to feed on except rocks? The sheep do have their heads down, as if grazing on something, but when I look down at the ground around my feet, all I see are a few scattered tufts of coarse grass growing among the rocks and dirt. Are you kidding me? The shepherd has led them all the way out here for this? These scraggly weeds will nourish them?

I’ve always pictured David’s sheep feeding in a lush green meadow near a cool, babbling brook while he sat beneath a tree strumming his harp. But this shepherd, leading his flock through inhospitable terrain, is the true picture Jesus painted for us when He said, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me . . . and I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:14–15). The reality of life as His disciple, as one of “the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:3), is a life of complete helplessness in a harsh environment, trusting the shepherd to lead us and feed us.

I admit that it’s hard for me to follow the Good Shepherd when the terrain is dry and the path is steep and rough. It’s even harder to watch my children follow Him on their own wilderness journeys, as all of them have this past year. Why would He take them through the valley of the shadow of death?

Maybe it’s because the Good Shepherd, like this shepherd boy, knows where to find food for His sheep. “Which of you,” Jesus asks, “if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” (Matthew 7:9). A loving parent doesn’t pass out rocks at the dinner table, yet sometimes the portion God hands us looks an awful lot like a stone—hard and unnourishing. Or like these sparse, unappetizing weeds. We have to trust that it isn’t. We may have to search carefully and endure a long, hot desert walk, but the food that the Shepherd leads us to and the lessons we learn on our rugged walk will nourish and strengthen us for the road ahead.

Even the Good Shepherd himself “was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted.” When Jesus grew hungry, Satan mocked Him saying, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread” (Matthew 4:1, 3). In other words, take the easy way out, think of your own needs, find greener pastures than where God is leading you. It’s so easy for us to believe that lie, to trust our eyes and not God, to forget that the long, hard way of the cross is the way to eternal life.

As the boy and his sorry-looking sheep move on to the next hill, I notice that there are a lot of places where the sheep could wander and become lost among the rocks. I’m guessing the boy would be in trouble if he arrived home with one of his father’s sheep missing. In an open area without boundaries or fences, how does the shepherd manage to keep his flock together? That’s one of the things I worry about the most, living as we do in a culture that no longer recognizes moral or ethical barriers. What will prevent my children from wandering off and becoming lost? Jesus answers my fear by explaining what the Good Shepherd promises to do: “Does
he not leave the ninety-nine . . . and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” (Luke 15:4).

On the night of the Last Supper, as Jesus was about to return to His Father, He gave an account of His little flock. “While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe. . . . None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled” (John 17:12). Jesus also promised that all of His sheep, including my children, would return safely home to the fold: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand” (John 10:27–29).

Even though my children will struggle through changes and desert times in their lives, the Good Shepherd will make sure they find nourishment there. And if they do wander away, getting lost in a culture without boundaries, Jesus has promised to search for them and lead them back to the Father’s fold where they will be safe for eternity. “Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep’” (Luke 15:6). No terrain is too bleak, no distance too far that it will stop God from rescuing His own. I can cling to that promise. I can trust the Good Shepherd.

Engedi

Our last stop in the Judean Wilderness is the Engedi Nature Reserve near the Dead Sea, a dozen miles north of Masada. According to the Bible, this is where David hid from King
Saul “near the Crags of the Wild Goats” (1 Samuel 24:2). Our group files out of the bus and starts climbing a steep, narrow trail. We are definitely in David’s hiding place because there are both crags and mountain goats here. Long-horned ibex amble across the rocky slopes as if they have suction cups attached to their hooves, taunting gravity. Furry brown
coneys
, which remind me of prairie dogs, scamper between the stones, poking up their heads now and then to stare back at us.

The trail is arduous. We ascend a slender cleft between car-sized boulders. Why in the world would God tell David to hide here? The lifeless Dead Sea blocks his escape to the east, and nothing but barren wilderness stretches in the other three directions. Where would David find water for himself and his four hundred men? How would they survive the scorching sun in a land without trees—or sunblock? If these men were “in distress and discontented” when they joined up with David, I don’t see their mood improving out here.

Gradually, we begin to see more and more green plants sprouting between the stones. Then I hear it—the sound of rushing, splashing, cascading water. We’ve arrived at an oasis. The air feels cool and refreshing after the difficult climb. The cold, spring-fed water is good to drink, the foliage lush and beautiful. This could be a lagoon in a Florida resort. Other tourists, including a group of young people with towels and bathing suits, are swimming and frolicking in the large, clear pool beneath the waterfall. Finding Eden in the middle of a dry, barren wilderness is so unexpected that I can imagine David’s surprise and relief when he and his men arrived here, hot and weary and thirsty. I see them stripping off their sweaty tunics to splash in the refreshing water, giddy with laughter. Clearly God was looking out for them after all.

Discovering an oasis in the wilderness shouldn’t surprise me. Again and again in Scripture and in life, I have seen God faithfully provide a time and place of refreshment for His weary children. It might be as unlikely as this freshwater pool near the Dead Sea or a weekend spiritual retreat at my church. Typically, I have to expend effort to get there. Finding time in my busy schedule or money on a tight budget requires as much effort as scaling a rocky mountain slope. It also requires me to be honest about my barren spiritual condition and willing to admit I’m in need of relief. It’s easier to camp beside the Dead Sea’s bitter waters mumbling, “Poor me. Why doesn’t God help me? Why can’t I feel His presence?” than it is to search and climb and stretch spiritual muscles that have become flabby from lack of use.

Wallowing in self-pity is hypnotic, as mesmerizing as floating in the Dead Sea. Unlike a body of freshwater, where I have to paddle to stay afloat, the Dead Sea’s dense waters allow me to drift on my back for hours and hours, expending little energy. This lethargy is habit-forming. The bitter, poisonous waters of self-pity are the wrong place to come to quench a dry soul. And if you float in the Dead Sea or in self-pity long enough and drift far enough, you’ll end up in enemy territory on the opposite shore—in this case, the land of Israel’s ancient enemy the Moabites.

The rugged mountains of Moab on the other side of the Dead Sea—now in the nation of Jordan—are clearly visible from our Engedi oasis. I find it interesting that the nation of Moab was birthed from self-pity. During the cataclysm that turned this once-fertile plain into the barren place that it is today—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—two sisters were jolted from sleep in the middle of the night and
told to run for their lives. Imagine their panic as they fled Sodom with the earth quaking beneath their feet and the night sky eerily illuminated with fire. Chunks of brimstone rained down around them, and screams of terror and pain echoed behind them as they staggered forward, inhaling the stench of sulfur and death. Their father, Lot, urged them toward the safety of the mountains, shouting, “Run! Don’t look back!” But their mother did look back, and suddenly she was no longer running alongside them. The terrified sisters didn’t dare to turn around to see what had become of her.

The night seemed endlessly long, the climb steep, but when dawn finally arrived, the sisters gazed down with their father at their ruined world. Shaken and stunned, they saw nothing but smoke and destruction. The catastrophe reduced their home, their city, to smoldering ashes. Everyone was dead. The girls’ faces reflected the same dull, stunned horror that we see in the survivors of earthquakes and tornadoes and hurricanes.

Days passed in despair and sorrow, until self-pity began to whisper to the sisters that God had abandoned them. They believed self-pity’s lie and decided that if they were going to survive, they needed to come up with a plan. “Our father is old,” one sister reasoned, “and there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then lie with him” (Genesis 19:31–32). Self-pity spawned sin, and both sisters gave birth to sons from their incestuous relationship. One named her child Moab, meaning “from father,” and it’s from him that the nation of Moab originated.

I’m grateful for this pilgrimage, a wiser choice than staying home and wallowing in self-pity. While I don’t have to leave home to find God’s oasis, I do have to search for it, pursuing
God in prayer and trusting Him to take care of me when all other hope is gone. He promised that “If . . . you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29). Like David and his men, I have to turn my back on the lifeless Dead Sea and start climbing.

Now that we’ve arrived in this cool glade, our guide has us sit down in the shade of an overhanging rock. He explains that this was once a cave that collapsed during an earthquake or a flash flood. It might even be the cave where David and his men hid from King Saul. Saul’s pursuit of David also began with a bout of self-pity after he heard the maidens of Israel hailing his victorious army with their song: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7). Self-pity gave birth to murderous jealousy, and Saul decided that David was his enemy and had to die.

As I sit in this remnant of a cave, I wonder why David hid instead of fighting back. He was a seasoned warrior; the men with him were desperate enough to fight when cornered. Saul’s forces outnumbered theirs by seven to one, but unlikely odds hadn’t stopped David in the past. As a boy, he had challenged a giant more than twice his size while other warriors cowered in fear. Wouldn’t logic tell David to fight, winning the promised kingdom through a military victory the way countless other leaders had come to power? Instead, David hid in a cave and waited for God to give him the throne. To a celebrated warrior, running and hiding must have felt cowardly. Waiting is always harder than doing something.

David had a lot of time to talk with God while hiding here. The Engedi oasis is peaceful, with water gurgling and birds twittering and leaves rustling in the wind. He composed some
of his most poignant psalms, revealing his struggles to trust in God, psalms that still offer strength and hope today in times of change. Reading Psalm 57, written during this time in David’s life, I can hear his impatience—and maybe just a twinge of self-pity. Won’t this pursuit ever end? I’m tired of it! Tired of living in a damp, sunless cave. I’m supposed to be the king. David poured out his sorrow, but even when tempted to feel sorry for himself, he always ended his psalms with hope and trust. “For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies” (v. 10). David managed to take his eyes off his bleak situation and look up to God, trusting His timing.

These are lessons I want to grasp, yet the only way to learn them is to be deprived of my own resources: to hunger and thirst, to be uncomfortable, to feel pursued and unjustly wronged. It might even mean suffering through a catastrophic change, like Lot’s daughters did, and questioning why God would allow this to happen. It might mean waiting for God’s promises, wrestling with unanswered prayer. And waiting some more.

One day, high in his oasis hideaway, David was given an opportunity to change his miserable situation. King Saul left his army at the base of the trail and climbed up to the cave alone to relieve himself. “This is a God-given opportunity!” David’s men must have whispered to him from their hiding place in the shadows. “You can kill Saul and end our misery and exile!” Was God finally answering his prayers?

David crept toward his enemy, but instead of killing Saul, he cut off the corner of his garment, then scurried back into the darkness. The Torah required all Jewish men to sew blue tassels on the corners of their garments as daily reminders
of God’s commandments. One of those commandments was “Thou shall not kill,” yet Saul was seeking to kill David without a just cause, using his kingly power and Israel’s army to do it. By cutting off Saul’s fringes, David sent Saul a clear message: You’re breaking God’s commandments. And perhaps the tassels reminded David of his obligation to obey God, as well. David could have killed Saul but he didn’t. He refused to succumb to self-pity and take matters into his own hands as Lot’s daughters had. God would put David on the throne when the time was right. David didn’t see Saul’s vulnerability as an answer to prayer but as a temptation to sin.

Imagine the angry whispering and wrestling in the back of that cave when David returned with a handful of tassels instead of Saul’s head. It must have taken quite a struggle for David to restrain his men from doing what he had refused to do. David had sworn an oath of allegiance to Saul before God, and he refused to break that oath or murder a defenseless man. When we truly trust God, we’re able to extend His grace, even to people like Saul who don’t deserve it. Vengeance belongs to God.