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A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

God's Place

God's Place

Though we New Mexicans live in a desert, our wilderness is often not a physical one. Our displacement and wandering often comes from within, in the form of expectations that we often place on ourselves. Expectations that, when not met, lead us to feel like we are alone and without direction; lost in a wilderness of our own making. Our temptation in this wilderness is to try to find our own way out. We have a “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” mentality. A mentality, that the saying itself suggests, is impossible. Thankfully, Jesus too entered the wilderness and He, being without sin, did not fall into this temptation. Jesus was the ultimate descension of God into the wilderness.

Since the Fall, since sin entered the scene, the wilderness has become a place of banishment, wandering and displacement. Adam and Eve were sent out into the wilderness from Eden, and the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. In both of these instances God’s people were full of doubt of God’s good plan for their lives and were trying to be their own providers. When we are no longer choosing to rely on God alone to be our sustenance and provision, and we start trying to rely on ourselves, the wilderness became a place full of the unknown. We, as humans, don’t like the unknown, we like to know what lies ahead; we like signs. The unknown causes fear, and so we seek to control. We seek to control by constantly giving ourselves ladders to climb; thinking that, if we can manage to climb those ladders then we can have satisfaction and fulfillment. There is no better example of this that the Tower of Babel. When people started trying to reach Heaven on their own, it only led to their downfall.

In Genesis 28 we see a vision that God sends to Jacob of a ladder descending from heaven into the wilderness, but that is not the first time we see God descend into the wilderness. The Ten Commandments were given to Moses when God descended into the wilderness at Mt. Sinai. During this same period God had also been providing for his people, the Israelites, as they wandered through the wilderness, showing that, even then, He was with them. The Tabernacle, a place where God literally descends and dwells, was built in the wilderness by God’s command. Many of God’s promises, fulfillments of prophecy, and visions sent to his people were completed within the wilderness. Our God is a God of descension. He has shown time and time again that he is present in the wilderness. When we are in communion with God the wilderness is no longer a place of fear, but a place of renewal and strengthening.  We may often exist in a desert place, but when we trust in God, according to his promise, the desert place becomes God’s place.

 ~Rachel Whippo