In the Wilderness

 By Lisa Cameron

Today’s sermon this morning in South Africa sounded vaguely familiar. It was about the wilderness. If you remember, Hopewell UMC , had a sermon series on different spaces and Pastor Eddie, who also happens to be my spouse, spoke about the sacred space of the wilderness.  What a coincidence! Honestly speaking, this sermon came at a really good time for me and I needed to travel halfway around the world to hear it. 

The pastor spoke about the transformative opportunities we can have in our season of wilderness. He reminded us that so many, who have gone before us, have needed to travel through the wilderness in order to reach the promised land. And while the journey in the wilderness sometimes makes us feel lonely, uncomfortable, and forgotten, God has not forgotten us. We have not been overlooked. God’s love for us has not changed. Interestingly, the takeaways I’m remembering from Eddie’s sermon is that there is a sacredness to this wilderness traveling. Because the time in the wilderness is temporary (though some of us are in our season of the wilderness) and necessary in order to learn and gain insight into what God wants us to do.

There are those who have those mountaintop moments – the moments of clarity, of seeing the path before us, of knowing what the ‘next thing’ is. But you know, I think there are those of us who experience the same thing in our seasons of wilderness: experiencing the love and graciousness of God in the most astonishing of ways. 

A beautiful woman, with a ‘ministry’ lanyard around her neck, came to me after church. She looked into my eyes and straight into my soul. She said that the Lord had given her a message for me and she wondered if she could share it with me. Here’s what she said: “There are so many dimensions of God. I pray that your eyes will be open to them and that you will see the Lord in your life. You have not been forgotten. You have not been cast aside. And If you are ever questioning if God wants to meet you in your most intimate places, the answer is yes.” 

For those of us in our season of wilderness, we are not alone, friends.

There is still hope in the wilderness.

There is still love in the wilderness.

And God still sees us in the wilderness.

Has always seen us.