He Will Create Rivers in the Dry Wasteland

There are moments in life when you find yourself standing in a metaphoric wilderness. You believe God can provide, and you see him providing for many around you. And yet, as the heat of the sun beats down on you and the streams before you begin to run dry, you begin to wonder…”Is God really for me?” I know he can provide in the way I need it, but for some reason, he’s choosing not to. And every day he doesn’t, the circumstances grow more dire. 

In these moments, our idea of what God’s goodness and faithfulness will look like is blown to pieces. Our foundation begins to crumble as we realize we’ve been finding our stability on our own expectations of how God should or will act, rather than the reality that his ways are often contrary to our finite understanding. 

So we stand at a crossroads, forced to choose – either God isn’t who he says he is or he’s a God whose thoughts and ways are far beyond my own. 

I find myself at this crossroad – again. The streams have run dry, the needs have grown beyond what anyone can save us from but God himself, and all we see from our vantage point is unending wilderness. 

I admit, I’ve been tempted to let a spirit of cynicism and doubt fester, as the Israelites often experienced. I don’t want to “put God to the test”, but I desperately need to know that he sees and cares. 

And yet at the moment, all I feel is the dry sand whipping against my face and a thirst for water that’s nowhere to be found; all I hear is the silence of the wilderness and the taunts that God’s arm is too short; and all I see is never-ending wilderness as far as the eye can see.

Maybe you find yourself here as well. 

I don’t pretend to have the answers. But I’m clinging to the words of Hagar as she sat alone, cast away, and dying in the desert – “‘You are a God of seeing,’ for she said, ‘Truly here I have seen him who looks after me’” (Gen 16:13). 

And the words of God himself: “I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland” (Is 43:19). 

But in the end, when we have nothing else to fall back on, we fall back on the cross. For “greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). Jesus has done so for us. Surely he won’t abandon us now.

Therefore, we can say with even a mustard seed of faith: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69). Remember our frame. For we are your children and our eyes are upon you.

Home is around the corner,

Sarah Walton

To read more of Sarah’s writings, you can purchase a copy of He Gives More Grace: 30 Reflections for the Ups and Downs of Motherhood, Hope When It Hurts: 30 Biblical Reflections to help you grasp God’s purpose in your suffering), Tears and Tossings (short evangelistic resource on how God carries our sorrows), or Together Through the Storms (for married couples navigating the trials of life).