Milk and Honey

I am always scared of returning home.

Why?
Because going home always seems to be a spiritual desert for me. A place where I find no spiritual food or even a place to get fed.  I picture a long and windy road before me, and I am stuck in the Neutral gear, unable to move forward past the desert.

No, I take that back. I'm in Reverse. A steady retreat to an uncomfortable and discontent yet lazy and apathetic lifestyle.  Back to a time of seeking and not finding, listening but doubting what my ears hear, looking and seeing nothing but brown sand and heat waves. One-way conversations with God.

It has made me passive. Too afraid to change anything because of past failed attempts, I find myself simply wishing I would come back... and things would just be different.

And so it is, with every summer/winter/spring break, that this fear of going back and seeing no change returns. Friends provide but a momentarily uplifting escape. The church and my family are preoccupied with their own spiritual battles.

It is in this time God speaks with such assurance and boldness that I can rest peacefully and, to my surprise, joyfully. He tells me that these two weeks, as short as they may be, will be filled with change.  The wilderness is necessary in order to fully experience my oasis.

"You, my child, will grow."

I do not fully understand the reasons for the wildernesses of God's absence. This I do know: while the wilderness is necessary, it is never meant to be permanent. In God's time and in God's way the desert will gave way to a land flowing with milk and honey.

- Richard J. Foster, Prayer

In God's time.
In God's way.