By Mark R. Powell
Desert Time
“Send out your light and your truth; let them guide me. Let them lead me to your holy mountain, to the place where you live. There I will go to the altar of God, to God – the source of all my joy. I will praise you with my harp, O God, my God!” (Psalm 43:3,4 NLT)
The most imperative moments of our life, those instances that bear the most weight and carry ultimate significance, are those seconds we spend facing The Holy (Rudolf Otto). These are the instances when our lives are punctured with the deepest beauty and truth, when we are at our most human and most vulnerable, and when our darkest corners and
our brightest possibilities are revealed to us. It is also in these moments when we find the dense clothing of God’s affection covering us so that even though we are known as we really are, we are also loved even as we are known.
The believer’s greatest test, then, arises in the constant challenge of seeking the Living and Holy God who is really there. It seems we have little trouble finding the God of past deeds and ancient victories, but we struggle to find the living God, the breathing God, the God of the moment. And don’t we also secretly fear what we will find living in us when we meet The Holy? Don’t we fear that the scars of our life are too painful to be exposed. Don’t we fear that God’s love may finally play out once our experiences are naked before him?
Why is this fear in our hearts?
We may be afraid because we know what God requires. We know that the living God will allow us no other allegiances and no other gods. So the test of his presence becomes the near constant choice we must make between him and the world, him and our other interests, him and ourselves. It's God or everything else. And we are given little leeway here: It is either relationship with God (covenant) or our own self-interest (idolatry):
I am YHWH your God
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
from a house of slaves
you shall have no other gods…(Exodus 20)
Jesus said it this way:
Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness… (Matthew 6)
And St. John said:
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, if anyone loves the world the love of the Father is not in him…(1 John 2)
Whatever the above readings might mean, what they certainly do mean is that God wants it all. He wants our body, our mind, our emotion, our will, and our heart. In fact, so powerful is this demand for surrender that, once given the gift of freedom (which occurs for us at salvation), choice becomes obligation and we are then ever after held responsible to select God and his ways every time over everything else!
Let this challenge seep into your soul for a moment so that you feel the life-dominating weight with which the word surrender here confronts us.
Just how are we to comprehend the constant pressure of this steep demand? Thinking honestly about our lifestyle and our activities, doesn’t this purity of heart or this purity of motive sound rather like the absurd, provincial notions of a disjointed religious babbler?
I mean, how could we, who always expect to enjoy our freedom and always expect to have our own way, how could we ever condone a message of demand like this one from God or anyone else?
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Back-Channel Chatter
“Is this why we signed on to the Jesus-way? Is this what it really meant? Were these surrender demands found buried somewhere in the fine print? To be sure, we want an escape hatch from final judgment (who doesn’t?), so we asked God to be part of our life, after which we let everyone know that we could get along on our own without any interference from him or anyone else, thank you very much. Of course, we toss up an occasional prayer now and again, and we attend the church of our choice, but what else could really be involved? And those who think otherwise should really get a life or something…”
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The point I am making is devastatingly simple. Without much effort at all we can become idol worshippers. That is, when we trust ourselves (our occupations, our friends and family, our doctors, lawyers and clergymen, our national defense and economy) for our own lives, then we make self-reliance our god; and no matter how you cut it in the end we worship ourselves. Broadly defined this is the sin of pride, the summit of the seven deadly sins, and the sin from which the other six flow. And remember, the root of pride is found in man’s not being, in some way, subject to God and his rule. (St. Thomas Aquinas)
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Back-Channel Grumbling
“What’s he talking about? We’re humble as humble can be, and we’re proud of it! So, simmer down a little, preacher.”
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I wonder, do I hear a protest out there? Do some doubt that pride is our sin? Well, perhaps one question will clean-up the matter: How many hours a week, not including church activities, do we spend before the LORD God, really focused only on him?
You see, what God really asks from us is our time (which ultimately is our life!). But isn’t it our time that we hold most dear, and isn’t it our time with which we have the greatest difficulty in letting go? Still, this demand by God on our lives continues sounding without interruption, softly reverberating back to our ears, serving only to shred our dodges and rationalizations: “Who are you, who am I, to ignore the Living, Holy God?!”
And, while we would never say it out loud, don’t we secretly think that our agenda is more important, our cause more compelling, our duties more essential, and our needs more vital than a relationship of love with the HOLY God that involves some sort of surrender? Why else would we offer him so little of our life? The simple truth is, we love ourselves too much.
FINDING GOD IN THE DESERT
So, I would ask again: How are we to comprehend the Holy God’s steep demand for surrender? To answer I would suggest another series of questions –
Would God really require something of us that was not best for us? Would God really call for us to surrender and not bring victory back to us out of such an act? Would God, who for us did not even spare his own son from execution, not freely give us all things, especially himself? Could it be that the individual out-working of the new life God has for us in Christ can only escalate from those frozen moments spent before him in the heat of silence, solitude and prayer? Could it be that a genuine covenant relationship with God – loving him and not the world, seeking him first and not our own comfort and freedom – is the path for our true human-ness to blossom and for us to know his thick and radiant love for us?
Here’s what we must remember: God’s love for us is so immersed in care, so dazzling in hue, and so compelling in power that he is determined we not miss his presence. At the same time, he will not avoid or invade our freedom. This means that by nature GOD is free and by creation and redemption so are we. This also means throughout our life, since God is determined to love us, the pilgrim-of-faith will experience the steady summons of God! And while this summons is an urgent sound, its tones are comprised of a soft cadence, with words of sweet fragrance and gaping openness. It is the summons from the heart of a friend tracking our soul, seeking time with us. It is a call that seeks to engulf us with fresh spiritual oxygen and with the promise of a renewed human-ness.
Yet, even while GOD pursues us in love some may ignore his call and ultimately never experience his beauty. But once we have chosen to partner with him, he intensifies the work of grace in us, creating and extending his touch, so we learn how to love and enjoy him more and more. Thus, the question is, will we ever cease churning out only these self-experiences, and instead, will we learn to expend time with the God who loves us?
The Medieval church attempted to respond to these demands of The Holy on their lives by creating a seasonal calendar that remembered the key life-points of Jesus, thus measuring the year by the confines of the Savior, and also by observing what was called the Divine Hours. The Hours attempted to break down each day into seven prayer-periods, with each segment having a particular theme associated with it. It was during these seven prayer hours that the monastic church stopped its work activity and daily made space in their lives for God. This then became the church at prayer. They prayed by reciting TEXTS of scripture (especially the Psalms), by meditating on the TEXT (this was called lectio divina) by contemplation (go here and here) -- sometimes called the prayer of the quiet -- and by vocal, intercessory prayer.
What is even more interesting is that the Hours actually developed from the life experiences of a group of third and fourth century Christians who came to be known as the Desert Fathers and the Desert Mothers. It seems that in these early centuries of the Christian faith there occurred a fleeing of many Christians away from civilization and into the wilderness of Egypt and Syria. These were the first Christian hermits, and we might well ask, what would cause such people to flee to the desert and separate themselves from the comforts of the world?
In the beginning many ran into the desert to escape persecution, but this eventually led to a general movement to the wilderness. The basic reasons for such actions included a rejection of an easy-believeism that had developed in the church after the acceptance of Christianity as the official State religion of the Roman Empire. Some of these hermits also sought to “die” to the influence of the world, modeling themselves after the Christian martyrs who had actually died during the earlier Roman persecutions. Others went to the desert to act as intercessors for the church, believing that prayer was the primary act of the community of faith. And some even fled society as preparation for the second advent, believing that Jesus would return very soon.
For me, by far the most compelling reason that these strange men and women deserted their culture for the desert, was their desire for holiness (sometimes called sanctification, and sometimes called theosis, which is the process of a mystical participation in God). That is, they believed that love of God was expressed through a holiness of life or a purity of heart that came only as a direct result of an unmediated experience of the Living, Holy God.
This meant that they became desert dwellers because they loved God and desired that their lives would always be pleasing to him. Their focus, then, became God and God alone. No distractions were allowed; no interruptions were accepted. Day after day through this ascetical life of solitude they searched for God in the inner world of the heart, following hard after his presence and opening themselves to his continuing creative work. As one of these hermits, Abba Poemen, said, “Let us enter our cell (i.e. the small cave or hut where they lived), and sitting there remember our sins, and the Lord will come and help us in everything.”
We look at these hermits today with a certain mixture of fascination and shock. Say what you will about these strange individuals, however, their actions are not without biblical precedent. Indeed, their fleeing to the desert seems to be based upon a rather consistent model of desert dwellers found in the biblical materials. In fact, their quest for solitude as a journey toward God may be seen in several highly visible TEXTS, so a strong case could be made for the existence of a general biblical idea that, if one really wanted to meet God, then one traveled to the desert because God especially dwelled in the thin air of quiet mountain solitude and the densely sparse places:
One day while Moses was taking care of the sheep and goats of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, he led the flock across the desert and came to Sinai, the holy mountain. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him as a flame coming from the middle of a bush. Moses saw that the bush was on fire but that it was not burning up." This is strange," he thought. "Why isn't the bush burning up? I will go closer and see." When the Lord saw that Moses was coming closer, he called to him from the middle of the bush and said, "Moses! Moses!"
He answered, "Yes, here I am." God said, "Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, because you are standing on holy ground. I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." So Moses covered his face, because he was afraid to look at God. (Exodus 3:1-6 TEV)…
Or, speaking of John the Baptist the TEXT reads:
The child grew and developed in body and spirit. He lived in the desert until the day when he appeared publicly to the people of Israel. (Luke 1:80 TEV)…
And even the Lord Jesus himself place himself in the desert:
Jesus returned from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit and was led by the Spirit into the desert, where he was tempted by the Devil for forty days. In all that time he ate nothing, so that he was hungry when it was over. (Luke 4:1,2 TEV)…
The next morning Jesus awoke long before daybreak and went out alone into the wilderness to pray. (Mark 1:35 NLT)
SEARCHING FOR ETERNITY WITHIN TIME
At this point you are probably asking, “Does this mean if we are to ever really find God then we must time-travel and convert to hermitry, roping ourselves off into the wilderness?” Well, before we dismiss this option out of hand, you might be interested in knowing that modern-day Hermits actually still exist! It’s true. There really are people who have chosen to follow the path of silence and solitude in order to search for God.
But no, I’m not suggesting that the desert is the only place to find God.
Having said that, however, I would in turn ask a question: If the desert makes no sense to you, then where will you go to find God? You see, just because the desert seems to be impractical to the American Christian, does that mean we are relieved of our calling of surrender to him, our calling to know him, to love him, to pursue him and to obey him?
I don’t think so.
One way to grasp what I am saying is to remember that what we are here describing is the essential, basic movement of men and women as they pursue God in Christ – asking how is it to be done in the post-modern world? But what I am also arguing is that this basic movement is real only as we seek GOD by giving him our time.
We who are on the Jesus-way actually learned about this from the Old Testament, as Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel attempts to drive home in one of his most famous books entitled, The Sabbath. He reminds us that in the Ten Commandments the term holy was applied to one word only, the Sabbath. Heschel goes on to say in the opening chapter of his book:
“He who wants to enter into the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil…He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world…on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in our soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.”
I would go even further by saying that, while giving the Sabbath and my soul is a good place to start, the LORD actually demands more than this from me. I would characterize God’s claim on us by saying that he calls for each of my days, each of my moments, and each bounce of my heart.
Still another way to get at what I am saying is to ask, “Are we so busy doing the necessary (living life) that we have finally neglected and refused the ultimate (The Living, Holy God)?”
“As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed them into her home. Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord's feet, listening to what he taught. But Martha was worrying over the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, ‘Lord, doesn't it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.’ But the Lord said to her, ‘My dear Martha, you are so upset over all these details! There is really only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it – and I won't take it away from her.’" (Luke 10:38-42 NLT)
This TEXT is so powerful and so provocative: “There is really only one thing worth being concerned about…” says Jesus, “Mary has discovered it – and I won't take it away from her …” (?)
Well, for heaven’s sake we would know that one thing? What could it be?
Could it be the presence of the Christ? Could it be that what we need, now more than anything else, is to really find our way to the feet of the living Christ, who is the life- giving Spirit? Could it be that we have settled for a knowledge-based faith – fat with church training notebooks, mountains of commentaries and twenty years of sermon notes, but barren of interior truth. Could it be what we really need is an experiential faith – a search for God that begins at the feet of Jesus Christ? Could it be that since we left-off our desert search for God that it is our soul now that is desert and desolate?
“There is really only one thing worth being concerned about.
Mary has discovered it – and I won't take it away from her.’"
So, what is the one thing that consumes you? What is your passion? What is the greatest desire of your heart? What is the center of you universe? Is it to know God?
THE DESERT AS METAPHOR
What might prove helpful here is for us to think of the desert not in terms of a place we go, but rather as a mindset we practice in our search for The Holy and Living God. If we were in the desert searching for God what would we do and how would we do it?
Decision Based Upon Love
To begin, we should think of the desert as a metaphor for our desire to pursue The Holy God. To hear this, we could begin by asking ourselves the same question we would ask those ancient hermits, “Just what would motivate someone to leave great comfort and power behind and to step into the mystery of the wilderness, as a way to seek our own burning bush that is not consumed?”
Strangely enough, what we find is that it is God who begins the search. It is God who continually calls us to himself with constant urgings, and at length one day we listen. Suddenly, we don’t know how, we begin to respond to God with a deep and growing desire to follow him wherever he leads. And this response is so strange to us at first because we had little desire before, but one day it was just there!
What is at also important to understand is that our decision to search for The Holy finds its motivation in us as his summons acts upon a small kernel of love for God implanted in our heart. So here’s the question: Do we really love God more than we love ourselves and our own lives? (Mark 8:35) On the day we find that we do, then we also find a willingness to submit to the desert. What also follows is that this initial crisis act of surrender toward the God whom we love will eventually lead us to give our daily life, our time, to him. (Luke 9:23)
Detachment Based Upon Solitude
When we arrive in the desert we are startled to learn that we are alone, really alone! Solitude can unnerve us because we are so used to having our time filled with activities and actions, reports and meetings, meals and entertainment. But we need the shock of desert seclusion to our heart; we need this sudden stop and this empty void, to turn our minds to God. This is why solitude brings on the questions of seclusion: “Now, what will we do? What is the next step? What is supposed to happen?” But when nothing happens, we immediately grab for control and agenda.
This is our first test. We find that the desert pursuit of God is not like anything other experience. We find that this pursuit of God cannot be pushed and prodded. We find that this pursuit of God is not under our control. We learn, in fact, that God is not on our agenda at all; we are on his. In place of those normal actions that bring about our usual desired results – step one, two three – we find the desert pursuit of God means we relinquish our steps and our power. We find in this search for God we wait. We find that in the desert we seek God from within, and we search for God in the subtle movement of the Holy Spirit as he brushes against our soul. It means we linger alone. It means the first move belongs to God.
Another way to say this is to say that this encounter with the craggy rocks of solitude opens to us the experience of a growing detachment. That is, when we decide to move toward God, we soon unearth the truth that all else must be left behind. We discover that The Living, Holy God alone is to be our satisfaction and our daily portion. We find we must forsake our settled affections and our creature comforts. We soon realize that in this move toward seclusion with God we must repeatedly focus the attention of our heart away from all else. This is felt as a tearing-up and a grief.
And, it is in this desert seclusion that our initial vague love for God begins to develops into a mysterious desire for a purity of heart before him. We discover that God is leading us more and more toward detachment, and that he will use the very difficult circumstances in our lives to further this movement. Here we finally learn the difficult lesson that no one and nothing else must ever come before him. Simply put, the dual fires of solitude and suffering teach us that it must be God and God alone whom we pursue, and that any other attachments only serve to dilute our focus and delay our surrender.
Listening Based Upon Silence
The desert also teaches us that we must learn silence. In the outside world, that which exists outside our heart, the constant prattle and the drone of life keeps both the love of God and our own self-knowledge at arms length. But in the solitude of the desert air, after a time, we actually learn that chatter really is only self-defense against the movement of God pressing in on us, and so we realize we must shut-up. Here we must learn to listen for the urge of God, the word of the Christ and the opening of the Spirit’s voice to our heart.
The decision to be silent and to wait on The Holy marks off for us the jagged path up the mountain toward God. In silence we are able to distinguish God’s voice from our own. In silence we are be able to hear God’s assessment of who we really. In silence we will finally discern that the shrill pronouncments of pride and self-importance, so often heard in us, are not really our true voices at all. And we will learn that even though these false voices surface time and again during our ongoing quiet – wanting to be heard and hoping to be delivered from the piercing light of God’s love – we must not relent.
Prayer Based Upon Love
Finally, the desert is primarily about prayer, but probably not prayer as we normally practice it. The solitude and silence of the desert actually causes us to re-think our understanding of prayer. Desert prayer causes us to seek out exactly what prayer involves? what actually occurs in the prayer moment? and what truly motivates us to pray?
Easily, these questions and others like them would take many pages to unpack, assuming I had the solutions, which I do not. So, for this present discussion, I simply want us to close by thinking through the idea of desert prayer in terms that will enable us to give God a significant place in our day.
Early on, I was taught that prayer is asking, but I know now that prayer is nothing of the kind. To be sure, there is petition in prayer, but that one aspect by no means defines prayer. In fact, I would argue that prayer cannot be defined, at least not by some sort of formula. Prayer is about intention. My activity becomes prayer when my aim is to clear time and space in my life for God. Prayer is about focus. My actions become prayer when it is my determination that God will be my center, and that in the midst of my daily activities God will have my attention. Prayer is also about desire. I love God because he first loved me and because he continues to love me, and it is from that love that my desire to be with God grows. Prayer is about relationship. You see, this is my life. I am free; I can use my life as I choose. But, as one on the Jesus-way, as one who has experienced the Grace and Love of God in Christ, I intend to give my time, significant time, daily time, in pursuit of The One, True, Holy, Living God, in order to be in relationship with him.
In other words, desert prayer is not offered because of what it can do for me – I pray therefore I’m healed; I pray therefore I get along better through the day; I pray that I might receive. No, in the desert we pray because God has summoned us. The Holy desires us and we arrive. His love locates us everyday, and after a time we find we can’t wait to be with him. Those moments become our oxygen, and daily his grace strengthens us to find him in the solitude and silence of the desert’s gentlest breeze.
Desert Prayer is based upon love – God’s love for me and my love for God. His love for me leads to his continued, relentless determination to bless me. And my love of him, based upon the finished work of Jesus – the life-giving Spirit – enables me to pursue God by choosing to give him hours of life. Desert prayer becomes the center of life; it becomes our daily bread, our every-day manna provision.