If Phoenix wasn't there.

Ok, so I love winter. I really do. Probably because I love boots and fur coats, but I think I have told you this.
All that being said, I found myself thinking today, “Really, another snow storm?” Boatloads of the white stuff fell last night, and I just am….kind of over it.
But, it’s water and with last year’s draught we will take it in any form it wants to come. Even if it is making me a little owl-y and making me wistful for days of summers gone by.

Why is it that I always think of things to tell you when I am on the treadmill? Probably because I am praying my mind can focus on something other than the feeling in my legs…and the side of my stomach…and this constricting feeling in my lungs that resembles being strongly out of breath.

No surprise here, running tonight made me think of how—to steal the line from the song—prone to wander we are.

When I was in the desert this fall my bestie and I went hiking. And as I was there, surrounded entirely by sand and gravel and cacti and nothing like home I thought to myself, “What would it be like if Phoenix wasn’t there? And all of this was just desert…all the way to Colorado? Thousands of miles of desert and I was in said desert?”

 

 

I would go totally bats. Like mad, delusional, clinical crazy. Way crazier than this stir-crazy the winter is making me feel.

I mean, WHAT IF PHOENIX WAS NOT THERE AND YOU WERE IN THAT DESERT???

After that little hike, I think I understood the Israelites better; those desert wanderers.

Why is it that whenever we read about them in the desert we are always so alarmed at their idolatry? Don’t we get a little shocked by it? We think, “How could they be so calloused, to literally BUILD themselves idols? Come on! You watched God part waters before you! He fed you manna! You saw his glory in the distance!”

I, too, must count myself among those who are stunned by their actions.

But really, I think it must be a feigned alarm, because I can’t be in true denial about MY wanderings, can I?

Probably.

The funny thing about wandering is that it usually involves blatant blessings, doesn’t it?

Think about it. Where were the Israelites? They were in the desert. And this is what we see! We see the arid conditions, the lack of water, the perceived scarcity of food.

But what does where they are tell us about where they are NOT?
Oh that’s right. They aren’t in Egypt anymore, are they? They aren’t in captivity any more, are they?
Sometimes I think I down play this in my life; the remembering that at least I am not in captivity anymore, or I’m not where I used to be, whatever.

This not remembering, then, tends to lead me to the wanderings. I feel like this must be what the Israelites’ problem was too. However, I can’t help but get over the fact that wandering usually takes place IN a blessing.

Like being blessed that they weren’t in Egypt anymore. I mean really…isn’t anything better than Egypt? Sure, the food’s not so great where you are now, but you aren’t under a foreign dictator who thought he was God anymore.  And that is a BLESSING. Great, grand, magnificent, beautiful, stunning blessing.

Yet they wandered in it.
The same is true for us, I have a sinking feeling.
I try to think of the things I wander to on a regular, daily basis. Things that get my focus on the THING rather than on blessing. Such blessed things that make me wander. And in that wandering, I complain. Bemoan. Labor. Show contempt.

Like unfinished work. I see the “unfinished” part, not the fact that I have work.

Or I see the dinner dishes that will wait until morning, forgetting the fact that I was blessed enough to have dinner.

The treadmill. Which labors me, really. And I can get so focused on the results this machine can produce in me, putting so much emphasis on that part of my life, giving it an elevated sense of importance to me. Wandering to it, while still complaining about how I don’t get the results I want fast enough. At the same time wandering away from the One who gave me the ability to run in the first place.

And what about all that snow? I have to shovel it around, I have to scrape it off my car. I could curse it if I wanted to. But no. How could I?

What I need to do is learn how to see that even ice falling from the sky is some type of stream in the desert.

Isn’t that what we pray for? Streams in the desert?  But we thought our prayer would be answered with rain. God, this is coming a little late…and not how I wanted it, I think. What about that crop of apples we didn’t harvest because you didn’t provide any?

“And yet,” he says, “You have somehow survived the winter. Even though I didn’t provide the kind of stream in the desert you wanted.” Maybe I can stop some wandering if I can begin to see that blessings come in forms unanticipated.

Maybe wandering stops when we stop. Stop wandering and give thanks for the present desert, which is its own blessing; because being in the desert means that at least we aren’t in Egypt anymore.