If you have no idea what it’s like to live in the desert, here it is in a nutshell:
It’s hot.
I mean, it’s ridiculously hot. You walk outside at 7 AM and it’s already scorching. By 9 AM, every drop of moisture in every inch of your body evaporates.
The dry heat literally hurts.
If you were to survey the land, you would see jagged edges. Rough rocks upon rugged mountains. Cracked earth beneath your feet. Sharp cactus everywhere.
It’s an extremely unwelcoming, unforgiving environment. When I first stepped foot in the desert, all I could think was — who in their right mind would want to live here?
At first glance, everything looks dead, and it seems like nothing can survive out there. And I often wondered how anything could.
Every drop of water — what little there was to be found — is precious and vital to survival.
Looking deeper into our hearts, the desert is a reflection of our own lives. Just like nothing can survive in the desert, we cannot live life apart from God in the seasons of our lives that are cracked, barren, and dry.
When we try to fill our lives with superficial things — money, awards, beauty, accolades, titles, power — we still thirst. Nothing can bring life to our deserts. Nothing can bring us to life, period.
Even if man denies the existence of water, he would still thirst for it.
Because God is the Living Water. The Water essential to our survival, without Whom we can’t survive these seasons of extreme drought.
And only He can quench this lifelong thirst in every desert we experience.
Only He can bring us to life and sustain us far beyond what anything else the world can offer.
This Lenten season, let’s remember the woman at the well. Jesus said to her, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Peace be with you, my gorgeous faithful sister.
