Barren Desert

Tuesday 11/18/2014 4:23 AM

Psalm 19 begins with these words, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” This past weekend I went on a motorcycle ride with three of my friends. We took a short three-day trip that lead us through Death Valley, through the Owen’s Valley, over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, through gold rush country and into the San Joaquin Valley before returning home. We saw a wide variety of scenery from the dry desert to snow-capped mountains, from the lowest point in North America to a nine thousand foot pass and from barren land to land filled with crops and livestock. David was right; they had no speech, they used no words, no sound was heard from them yet their voice spoke to anyone who took the time to listen.

I have complained over the past year that God seems silent; his voice seems still when I tune my ear to listen. But I heard more from God in the past few days riding my motorcycle through the beautiful California landscape than I have over the past two years reading my Bible. Seeing plants clinging to life in the bone-dry desert gives me hope that some semblance of life with God may lie beneath the barren landscape of my soul.

One of my concerns about my current lack of connection with God is a fear that I have lost my voice in proclaiming the glory of God to the world around me. How can I encourage others to have intimacy with God when I am not experiencing it myself? How can the love of God ooze from my pores for others to see and to experience when the love of God seems absent from me? I wonder if, like the heavens, my voice will go out to the ends of the world even when there are no words, no speech, and no sound echoing within my soul. I pray that the glory of God can be evident to others in my barren life in the same way the plant clinging to life in Death Valley revealed the glory of God to me.