stories from a wanderer  | d e s e r t |

When you feel challenged, and life is hard, or almost impossible, always remember, “Some lessons can only be learned in the desert.”  Today I attended the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a first for me, attending a service at a Baptist church and “oh my,” it was a lovely experience.  Everything was great, the welcoming atmosphere as you entered, the people, the music, the architecture of the building, but my favorite was the message and the passion that it was delivered with.

The pastor discussed how there are many times in our lives when we are stuck in the desert, the middle if you will. And how it is during those times when you’re there, that you start asking questions like, “Where do I fit?” and “Can I really trust God’s conclusion for my life?” When you’re stuck in the middle, in the different deserts that we all hit in our lives, the pastor encouraged the congregation to TRUST.  Trust that God, the writer, director and producer of your life, knows exactly what he’s doing and that it’s his plan, because God has a way of out doing us. God is able to go well beyond our wildest imaginations and give us such and amazing and blessed life.  We were encouraged to recognize that God does some of his best work in the desert.

Sitting there listening to this message I was blown away. I thought of my life and the times that I saw God’s hand in my life. The times where he answered my prayers for guidance, with solutions beyond my wildest imaginations and how I knew during those moments that I should trust the path given and move forward. It was so easy in those moments to see God’s hand in my life. It’s harder in those moments in between, when I’m asking for help and not really seeing a clear path.  In those moments, I feel like I’m in the darkness, and knowing that I need to keep moving forward I just commit to a direction and start moving one step at a time.  I know that even as I bump in to things and work through them, he has a plan.

I walked away from service feeling grateful for the desert. Without the valleys, we would never have the peaks.  –a wanderer-