Many of us have been using the Lectio 365 devotional app this week to accompany us on our journey through Lent this year (if you haven't yet, it is well worth installing so that you can join us).
These words in the app this week really spoke to me:
"It's easy to think that, if I could just evade or avoid my current difficulties and disappointments, I would experience God more powerfully and be able to live for him more fruitfully. But what if he is telling me to prepare a way for him, right here and now, within the painful and shameful places of my life?" (Pete Greig)
In other words, even though I desperately don't want to be in the wilderness, maybe it is precisely in this dry and seemingly barren place that God will meet me. Maybe God will use a dry season or difficult circumstance to meet me in a burning bush? When I look back it may be that this wilderness has offered me gifts I never would have expected. What a hopeful perspective when life feels difficult!