The midbar, the desert, is a sacred place. In the desert we receive the Torah. In the desert we undergo a growth process, are transformed from slaves to a nation of free people ready to live independently in their own land.
This week, as we enter the book of Bamidbar, of being “in the desert,” I invite you to notice the ways that you feel you are indeed in the desert in your life and to embrace them as part of the process of growth.
To feel that you are “in the desert” might mean that you are feeling lost and confused, that you don’t see a clear path ahead, no signposts, just clouds of dust, that there is this feeling of stuckness, of spending forty years wandering in circles and getting nowhere. Or it might mean that all you see around you is barrenness, emptiness, hopelessness, that at the moment there is no sense of growth or of even the possibility of growth inside or outside you, just nothingness. Or it might mean a pervasive sense of lack, of being missing something essential like water, hungry, thirsty, constantly in a state of wanting, never satisfied or content.
We hit these spots not infrequently on our journeys, places of desert. The Torah devotes a full book to this state, and in it, there is so much struggle – and sometimes the struggle seems endless and hopeless, stagnant – but also so much growth. The invitation, as we enter this book, is to understand the sacredness of these moments of desert, not just to allow them, but to cherish them as an essential part of the process of transformation. Not seeing the path ahead provides an opportunity to let go into uncertainty and into the unknown that lies ahead, to trust what is unfolding and to know that we will be carried on eagle’s wings – ever accompanied by the divine presence in our midst – even through these dry patches.
Photo by The Lazy Artist Gallery at Pexels
