UMC20220522 Finding God in washing dishes

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UMC20220522 - Finding God in washing dishes¶

In a sermon I listened to last year, the pastor was preaching about Israel’s wanderings throughout the desert. He made a really interesting analogy by comparing the journey of Israel out of Egypt, into the desert and arriving at the promised land, to the seasons of our lives. He explained that there are times in our lives we are in the season of Egypt; a place of suffering, loss and depression. At other times in our lives he explains that we are in the season of the desert; a place of wandering, toil, feeling aimless, asking why we havent arrived yet or complaining about the state of things. And lastly there are times in our lives where we are in season of the promised land; we experience the joy of childbirth, the completion of a project, or an overwhelming experience of love. 

He then said that the ratio that he has observed this occurring in is generally around 15:70:15. For 15% of our lives we are in the desert, 15% in the promised land and interestingly for 70% we are in the desert. At first I found this disconcerting. Do we really spend most of our lives in this aimless trudging through the desert? But as this message has seeped deeper into my psyche, I have realised that the promised land and the desert are what they are because they are extra-ordinary, they are outside of the ordinary frustrations and toil of being in the desert. So it makes sense that most of our lives is spent in the desert, having left somewhere but having not yet arrived somewhere else. 

This realisation has given me a wonderful acceptance of the everyday trudgery that I once resisted. Now I haven’t got it perfect, but my next goal is to be able to find God in the desert. To know that God walks with me and that my trudgery and mundanity is part of building the kingdom of God.

Maybe you can join me in this goal.

Love,

Cliff