Series: Flowers in the Desert
Psalm 107:4-6 ESV
Even though I’ve never lived in an actual desert, I have lived in a wasteland.
When I moved there I did not know it was a wasteland because on the outside it didn’t look like a wasteland.
It didn’t feel like a wasteland before I moved there.
The people I met in the beginning must have initiated an elaborate plan so it would not look and feel like a wasteland.
The first day I was there, people who lived there formed a long line and the all spoke words of love and they promised they would always care.
I remember standing in line for more than an hour while each one came and made their promise.
I was really tired by the time the last person in line spoke to me.
She gave me a single flower and she told me even though we may not be friends, she would always love me and she would pray for me every day.
Over the course of time, one by one the other people in line faded away. I was really glad that some of them stopped coming to talk to me because I found out they really didn’t want to be my friend, they just wanted to be able to tell other people that we were the best of friends.
Others stopped coming because they didn’t agree with how I wore my hair.
There were some who stopped coming because they didn’t like it that I wore old jeans (those were the days before old jeans were okay).
Still others disagreed with what I allowed (or didn’t allow) my children to do.
A few of them told me to my face I was not at all what they expected.
Only one of them, only the last woman in line prayed for me every day.
It’s interesting that two sisters, fifty years older than me did eventually come to me and we became friends. They didn’t say they loved me and my children, they just loved me and my children.
Oh how I loved them!
The last woman in line who had a flower in her hand the day I moved to the wasteland prayed for me for many many years. I prayed for her as well.
Psalm 107:4-6 tells us, “Some wandered in desert wastes,
finding no way to a city to dwell in;
hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.”
The day I met her in the wasteland I was hungry and thirsty and she fed me. We fed each other. She gave me water from her wisdom. Our souls met. We cried to the Lord when we were in trouble. God delivered us because we both asked. Together we asked.
It turned out she had a quick wit and a hearty laugh. She was a very clever sort who had lived in places I’d never known about. Because of who she was and who her parents were she was a bit of a celebrity around those parts.
Even so, you’d never know it by the way she acted. The only reason I found out she was a celebrity was that other people told me her story.
My world had always consisted of being surrounded by people of God. When I met her I came to realize that I grew up in a protected environment. My dad was my protector, my teacher of all things given to us from God, and my spirit guide when navigating life. She did not have a protector growing up. In many ways we were opposites.
When I lived in the wasteland, almost every day she would offer a story, or a joke, or she would impart wisdom about something I knew absolutely nothing about.
She loved me and I loved her.
I did not just love her because she was a clever sort, I loved her because she shared with me everything about who she was in God. Because she did not grow up with a human protector, Jesus became her guide when she was a young adult.
She shared her love of Jesus with me.
One day she told me about a bright shining star who was a lovely beautiful young woman who lived in the wasteland as well. She told me she thought this beautiful smart woman would be a great match for my son who had gone off to college. When he came home one summer after finishing college he met this beautiful young woman at a coffee shop in the wasteland. They eventually married. I do not believe their meeting was an accident. I believe my clever friend prayed that they might meet.
Even after I moved away from the wasteland and I made new friends elsewhere, we continued to pray for each other daily.
For twenty seven years we prayed.
We loved.
We shared our stories about Jesus.
One day I got a phone call and I was told her flower was wilting. She wasn’t able to speak to me. She was drifting away. I prayed for her day and night.
Then the phone call came that she was in the arms of Jesus.
I am more grateful than I can say that she brought me the flower.
You see, in the midst of the wasteland she was the flower.
I will never forget the flower and I know I will see her again.
I know we will run like children in fields of flowers. I am ever so grateful that God sent me a flower in the wasteland.
Spiritual Practice: Flowers
Thank God for the blessings He has sent to you.
In God, Deborah
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