Who Is Stirring the Sand?

“Thus says the LORD, “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness” Jeremiah 31:2

Who Is Stirring the Sand?

Grace – At the edge of the Sahara, the sand moves as if it were alive.  It writhes, glittering scales of shifting silicon.  The serpent of the desert is there, slithering its way across the dunes, powered by the invisible interplay of heat and cold.  At the edge of the Sahara, one look convinces you that this is no place to hunt for treasure.

The wilderness is the place of demons, and the place of the divine.  By entering the desert, we volunteer to be stripped of our pretensions of self-sufficiency.  We determine to throw ourselves on the God who provides.  But what we discover is not what we expected.  Grace, in Hebrew hen, is unmerited favor.  It is also acceptance, even preference by Someone much more powerful than men.  If I am going to live in the wilderness, I must find hen.  I cannot journey here without surprising benevolence.  I am at the end of my abilities and myself.  I cannot hold back the serpent in the shifting sand.  But God can.

Genesis 6:8 is the paradigm example of grace.  God has been in the grace business a very long time.  Even in a wilderness of water, grace arrived.  Grace is not just the partner of desperation.  It is the offspring of faithfulness.  It is the child of God’s character.  Grace comes to me because God knows my need.

As you wander in the wilderness, turn your sight not toward the serpent in the sand but toward the God who rules over the dunes.  It is not the sand that is the enemy here.  The enemy is our refusal to see the finger of God touching the earth in the waste places.  When your life is filled with shifting sand, God’s finger is touching those dunes.  The sand is only the means by which He brings His favor.  Are you looking for that surprising benevolence today or do you have sand in your eyes?