It is hard for me to believe that it is over a year since I have shared a blog post. On the other hand, it has been a difficult year—the continuation of the COVID-19 Pandemic. For many people, including me, it has seemed to be a “desolate place.” It has included a loss of community, death of family members, loneliness of isolation and fear of the future. Perhaps you can identify.
It was during the lowest time of my “desolation” that I was reading in Mark 6:30-44. Three times in those verses the term “desolate place” was used, out of the over 200 times it is used in Scripture. My soul caught on to this description and I began studying just what is meant by this term. It was both enlightening and encouraging.
Some of the implications of a “desolate place” are lonely, state of bleak and dismal emptiness, comfortless. But, it is in these desolate places that God’s goodness is displayed and it is always beautiful! Such places can be a place of rest or healing from grief. Desolate places are unique venues for the purpose of hearing from God. Such trying experiences bring us to surrender totally to God and to know the reality of restoration and His love.
Unfortunately, we often try to run from desolate places in our lives through extreme busyness, sports, Netflix, drinking or eating excessively, shopping—and the list goes on. Whenever we do this, we miss the abundance of provision God wishes to bestow on us.
Unfortunately, it is during these times of feeling desolate that we are open to the lies of Satan which tell us we are abandoned, no one understands or cares. These are lies from hell. God is not only with you in your times of desolate places, He is working in and through you to produce a form of beauty that could only come from Him. God promises that he will make us flourish as we embrace Him in our times of feeling desolate.
I close with this poem by Edwin Markham:
When the great oak is straining in the wind,
The boughs drink in new beauty, and the trunk
Sends down deer roots on the wind wide side.
Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrow comes
To stretch our spaces in our heart for joy
Image: God’s Abundant Love by Sarah Moor