The Desert and the Oasis

We all know the spiritual analogy of the oasis and the desert, right?  The oasis is a place of rest and refueling.  We stop and fill up our water jugs.  We rest in the shade of the trees.  We have a picnic lunch while the palm trees wave gently overhead.  We feel God shining on us in favour and provision.

We dread the moment when we will have to leave and go back to the desert.  We try to hold off the return there as long as we can, but we end up thrust back into the desert where the sand drags at our every step.  Our throats scream for more water than the sip we must take to preserve our limited supplies.  The sun blazes down on us and cracks our lips and dries the tears from our eyes almost before they can fall.  We have no strength for anything except to take that next step.  These are times of testing and trial, times when God seems distant and far away.

In the past few weeks, I have seen God working in some really cool ways.  I have seen him orchestrate events in a way that show me that he is on the move.  I feel encouraged.  I feel like I have regained a sense of purpose.  I feel like I can dream again.  I feel like I am in an oasis.

That's all really cool.  I am grateful.  Because I have just come through a period of drought.  For weeks and months, I couldn't sense God at all.  I knew he was working; I could even see his provision, but I could not feel his presence.  I felt a bit like Moses hearing God say that he would send his angel before the Israelites but that God himself would not go with them.  Provision without presence.  No thanks.  I came really close to giving up.  In fact, there was a point at which I felt like I had given up.  But then 30 minutes later, the phone rang, and everything changed.

I know what the desert is like.  I am intimately acquainted with wilderness living.  And I know what the oasis is like.  I know what it is like to come into those periods of strength and joy, instead of dragging myself through the sand.  I love the oasis.  I hate the desert.  The living is hard in the desert.

But I've been thinking . . . something doesn't make sense . . .

If the oasis is the place where I am being refueled and resting, then why am I working so hard?  Don't get me wrong.  It's a good work, and it's good to be working hard.  I am strong and filled and ready to work.  I am in a position where I can give.  But if this is the oasis, the place where I feel good and I sense God's presence, and I just got here after months and months of dragging myself through the desert, then how on earth can I be in any position to be giving?  How can I be working?  How can I be ministering to others out of what ought to be a completely depleted well because I have just staggered in from the desert?  I ought to be dying of thirst and guzzling water, but instead of drinking, I am giving my water away.  Somehow, I have walked into the oasis, and I am not thirsty, and my water jug is full.

But where did that water come from?  "I know I'm filled to be emptied again; the grace I've received I will sow."  I am filled.  I have received grace.  I am able to sow that grace.  But then where on earth did that happen?  I just got here!

Impossible as it seems, I think that it happened. . .
. . . in the desert.

I have always thought that in the times of oasis, I am being refreshed and renewed and strengthened so that I can get through the desert.  It's like I store up reserves for those times when I will have nothing to give and no strength to give it.  But look at that. . . it means that I store up and I dry up, but I never give.  I am too busy gathering for myself what I need to survive the drought.  When do I actually give?  And I never noticed that before.

So I wonder . . . maybe I've got it backward.  Maybe the times of oasis are those times when I am strong and filled, and I can give with joy.  And then, maybe, God graciously allows me to go to the desert, not as punishment because I have displeased him, but to rest and be filled again, to learn new lessons of his grace, his provision, and his goodness.  Then, when I leave the desert, I will be refueled and ready to give again.

Maybe that's what James means when he says that we should count it all joy when we face trials of many kinds, because we know that the testing of our faith develops perseverance.  And then he says, "Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything"  (James 1:3,4).  Maybe, just maybe, the work of the desert is to fill me up.