The Barrenness of Wilderness

Photo Credit Ryan Roth Klinck

By Andrea Lingle

The pit was empty; there was no water in it.
Genesis 37:24b
 

And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favour in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.” Exodus 33:15–16

The rock face was wet. Water streamed from above his head down to his feet where it just stopped. There must have been a crack or hole just where the path met the cliff wall, because the dust of the path was only slightly impeded by the waterfall. The wall was streaked with color from ages upon ages of mineral laden water laying down a little iron here and a little cobalt there. The light from the fading day shone dully from the length of the wall-turned-pool.

Here, in the fading light, a man stood: exhausted, lost, refusing to go on. He had been a foundling, a prince, a fugitive, a shepherd, a magician, and a wanderer. Roughly in that order. He had known thirst, despair, frustration, anger, loneliness, doubt, fear, hopelessness, arrogance, hunger, wonder, and disappointment. Not in any order. 

His footsteps stretched in loops behind him. So many places to have been without being anywhere. So many roads to have walked without getting somewhere. He was standing in the last of his footsteps. He had stood here, dimly reflected in the sheen of moisture, for three days. Occasionally he cupped his hand against the wall to scoop up enough water to stave off thirst. It wasn’t the first time he had had to drink from a rock. 

He would love to have said that here on the mountain, as he stood in his footprints, he had had visions, he had heard the voice of God ricochet down the mountain, there had been one single sign that he was not alone. But all he had seen was the slow, steady streaming. Hour after hour, for a trinity of days. 

As he stood, his eyes closed, and he imagined the wall enclosing him, engulfing him in its mysterious endlessness. He could almost feel the walls bending around him, smelling of cold damp granite. Would it be an altar or a tomb? 

How do you hope in the wilderness? How do you walk on the weary way? Oh, wanderer, you must know this: the place you long for is created by the road you are walking. 

Hope streams down rock faces in the desert.