I'll kneel down wait for now...

"In our culture of constant access and nonstop media, nothing feels more like a curse from God than time in the wilderness. To be obscure, to be off the beaten path, to be in the wilderness feels like abandonment. It seems more like exile than vacation..."
-Jonathan Martin, Prototype

Sarai is barren.

She and Abraham are getting on in years and they still do not have children. God promised them descendants as numerous as the stars, but as time went on and no child came Sarai doubted. She sent her servant Hagar to be with Abraham and when Hagar became pregnant Sarai's pride and jealousy overcame her. She was cruel to Hagar and so Hagar fled.

She ran. A young woman alone in the wilderness. Pregnant, afraid.

But then something happened. She heard a voice calling to her. 

"Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?"

"I'm fleeing!", she answers neither question.

 She doesn't know where she is going. She doesn't know where she's been. 

She's just running. (1)

So often in my life I feel as though I'm just running. The world is big. It scares me. I know God's promises to me, but like Sarai I doubt. I try to take matters into my own hands because in my eyes nothing is changing. 

Like Hagar I run and I don't know where I'm going because I don't even know where I've been and sometimes God tells me exactly what he tells Hagar.

"Go back." (2)

The last thing I want to hear. He sends me back to find myself, to find him. He sends me to the place where I feel I have nothing. It is so clear to me that the door is closed, but I am not God. I cannot see all things. He is the God of seeing. Who am I to question?

I listen and turn back.

 I want to run, but I don't because God's faithfulness, his love it draws me. Every fiber of my being yearns for him. I trust him when I am afraid simply because I know he is worthy to be trusted.
It is I who falters...never him.

The wilderness is scary. It is there that we are tempted because it is there that we are weakest, but in our weakness God is strong.  I literally have no where else to turn. I cannot trust myself to act because then I would never stop running so I listen. 

I trust. 

I wait.

It is no easy road before us, but God never promised that it would be. When Hagar is sent back to Sarai she is told that the child she will bare will be "a wild donkey of a man. His hand against everyone and everyone against him." (3) The task before her is not an easy one, but she has God. He is with her and she knows it. 

She listens. She turns back.

No matter the difficulties I face. The days when I would like nothing more than to curl up into a ball and cry with desperation or rage against the storms coming my way I close my eyes and I remember that I am not alone. God promised he would be with me...always.

Isn't that what truly matters? I cannot know the outcome of each situation and I'm not sure I want to know most of the time. I follow Christ by trusting him at his word, to be with me no matter where I go. So as I journey through the wilderness, knowing that the days will not be easy, I hold on anyway not because what awaits on the other side is beautiful but because the one that I follow is worthy.

(1) Genesis 16:1-8

(2) Genesis 16:9

(3) Genesis 16:10-13