Where We Cry
“He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of a wilderness; He encircled him, He cared for him, He guarded him as the pupil of His eye.” Deuteronomy 32:10 NASB
Howling waste– Have you ever been in the wilderness at night? Far from the man-made delusions of protective cities, scary things move in the dark. Once in awhile you can see eyes just outside the firelight circle. But you will never be more frightened than when you hear the howl. The cry of an animal brings all of our insufficiency into focus. It is the cry that confirms we don’t belong in this place.
Howling (yĕlēl) is connect with tōhû, a word that gives us an even more disturbing picture. tōhû is the word for chaos, confusion and meaninglessness. You will find it in Genesis 1:2 (“without form”). It is primeval disorder. There is something sinister about this kind of existence, and if you look deeply enough into your own soul, you will find just this kind of place; a place where the malevolent beast within howls its cry of destruction.
God finds us in just this place. At the end of ourselves, confused, disordered, frightened, feeling the claws of our own inner destruction pawing at the inside, screaming to get out. This is the real desert—the emptiness that knows no boundaries. Inner terrifying space. This is the place where God rescues us because no one else can, not even our own souls. This is where we hear our own unutterable cry of terror and discover that it is not too much for God to listen to. Everything in us wants to run away, until God puts His hand on our shoulder and whispers those words we have longed to hear in the howling waste: “I’m here too.”
If you have never been to the howling waste, you are either blessed or cursed. If you have never been there because God spared you from knowing the depth of your desperation, you are blessed, in a sort of upside-down way. Blessed because God knew you weren’t ready yet. But if you have never been there because you have been running for protection ever since you heard that first howl, you are pitifully cursed. The howl will never end until it encounters the God who lives in the waste places. Until the word of God comes in the desert, the howl holds us in fear.
If you hear the silence howling, stop running. God knows that sound too.
Topical Index: yĕlēl, tōhû, howl, chaos, disorder, Deuteronomy 32:10
As I have been reading these WODs each day I find myself relating and struggling with a sense of hopelessness. It wasn’t long ago that I had this following experience that I felt I wanted to put into a sort of poem:
I went to the ocean that day to visit my dear friend
My friend who had always brought comfort to my troubled soul
All my fears and troubles would wash away with each rhythmic movement of the waves splashing on the shore
But not that day
With each wave I felt the tumultuous crash churn within me, as though it was mocking me, in my pain
“Will you not cease for one moment?” I cried
“Will you not stop for one minute and recognize my pain?” I pleaded through the tears streaming down my face
“Have you no compassion on my tormented soul?’
“Why do you not bring peace to my mind and rest for my being as all the times before?”
The ocean replied
“I can not cease from my movements for I serve my Creator and my Creator alone”
“I can not bend to the will of any other being”
“Dear one, you find no peace because you are out of rhythm with your Creator”
“Align yourself once again with Him and your soul will move in harmony with me once again.”
I knew that this was a way of God speaking to me. It was such a real conversation but I can’t seem to find the rhythm I am looking for. How do we do that? How do we find that peace within when all the world SCREAMS at us? They use His Word against us in those screams. Will He say, “well done?” Where is the line? The line between rest and faith verses diligent faithfulness to His work? I know that no one can really answer that for me but can anyone tell me how to find it? Maybe it is the thorn I am to have to keep me seeking Him all of my life. A day of peace, a day of a sense that I am where I am suppose to be and doing all I am called to do, ONE DAY. Just to breath with ease and have a rest for my heart and head, one day. But a taste of that would never be enough.
Cheryl, I liked the poem a lot. It reminds me of the poem I wrote when I was driven out of the church. I was terrified and confused and thought for sure that I was beyond the pale of everything I knew that would keep me ‘safe’. I stayed that way for a long time. I quit thinking I would be rescued. I started trying to do righteousness ‘alone’ because, of course, I felt I was outside my own religious paradigm, and that God was not hearing me. I rummaged through the bag of coping skills I had, as well as through every single thing I had ever learned about how it was all ‘s’posed to be’. The desperation drove me to the very bottom of my bag of tricks, as well as the last drop in my gas tank. I spent it all, and felt like a desperate, lonely loser every step of the way. What I saw in my bag, as well as what I saw when I tried to ‘use’ what I had in that bag, were both enlightening and shocking. The world shocked me, but what I learned about myself shocked me even more. Needless to say, I would have chosen none of the above, if it had been up to me. It all went against everything in me! I hated it! It was awful!
I wished there was a shortcut so many times to the end of the road I found myself on, out there in the middle of nowhere. I wished somebody would give me tips and tricks. Looking back, I can see that I did not believe – until I saw for myself – that what I thought I had that was ‘good’ had flaws in it. It looked really good on the shelf: it sounded really good when somebody sold it to me in the name of righteousness, too. It also looked good when I saw others going around dressed up in it. But so much of it was actually factory rejects: 99.96% Ivory soap mixed with stuff that rendered it unusable in reality. I also had to see for myself the hidden parts of myself that I had cherished in the dark: the stuff I had been handed as a given in my generations, too. I had to see it all for myself crash and burn before I ‘got it’. I am a slow learner! And I thought I was a fast one! I was shocked every step of the way.
I was mad at God because I thought that if I signed on with every bit of sincerity in my heart, He would meet me where I was at and have mercy on me. What I got was thrown into a maelstrom. And that was a mercy. He did meet me: the maelstrom was where I was already at, and didn’t know it. I was programmed for failure from the outset: He was just kind enough to show me that in the only way I could have understood it. Further, He engineered incentives to change. When we are young in the faith, we get fed pre-chewed food (“pap”), but the “strong meat” is where we have to learn to discern for ourselves what is food and what is rocks. I found myself attempting to chew a lot of rocks that I thought were good!
Tips and tricks? Quit kicking against the pricks. Humble up and ask to be shown the disfunction. Repent for all the confirmation bias you have learned to employ to make yourself feel ok. Learn, like you have suspected when you wrote “Dear one, you find no peace because you are out of rhythm with your Creator”, exactly HOW that rhythm is off by trying it out. But DON’T do it like I did it: all alone. Take a step, check with your Partner. Take another step: check again. There’s the rhythm. That’s what I learned. All that misery, and that’s all I had to learn? Trust in the midst of the fire. It’s only fire to those who insist on sticking their fingers in it. If it burns, stop! It’s sin! If it is peace, stay there. It’s guess and check all the way. Have a nice trip! (Me too!)
Cheryl and Loretta–
Reading your post looks exactly like what I’ve written in my own journal the past nine years. What a joy and comfort to know we are all in this broken down boat together! Thank you for your words that are both challenging and encouraging.
Tracy, knowing we are not alone is one of the best ways to convert those wildernesses into oases. Let’s plant palm trees and start drinking living water and keep extending the right hand of fellowship. Wilderness is an interior job, I have found: essential to recognize, for sure, but still optional and certainly not the heart of God for us. May your little corner of the world bloom today with His rain in your life, and may my camels refresh themselves in the shade cast by your tree (Psalm 1) again! We are called to be trees planted by living waters, after all. You just made my day. God bless!
I resemble all that, we must be humans searching for our Maker not realizing, in full measure, that He is inside us. Running from the mirror as we don’t recognize that that is reflected. There is a distraction even in the running, the avoiding, the turning away, the searching, the hunting, Until we have spent ourselves empty and found ourselves wanting. A prisoner behind bars, locked up in self-destructive self-centeredness instead of faith in Him to answer and fill the hopeless hole inside. We put so much faith in ourselves forgetting what we look like in the mirror without Him.
Those faithful waves crash the rocks into the sand of our souls, faithful obedience to the rhyme of His heartbeat. Following even unto the death of the rocks their form get destroyed, it is tumbled, tossed, pounded, crashed and dashed, broken up and scattered. All the beautiful shells crumbled, places of hiding. We cried out for change and Change is what we got for sure but not what I had in mind. I sang along the shore that I would follow Him wherever He went and no matter how far or the cost but surely not “My Own Image !!!?”???! Footprints in the sand? That’s about all we see of Him and that’s about all He wants to be seen of us…invisible…I am losing my identity and am finding the impressions of His weight and movement in the sand are another expression of His great love for me. Learning to be lead even when I don’t know how or what I am doing, or where, or for how long. I try to remember: My cross is to be carried by me daily, the yoke is easy and my burden light, as He carried the full weight of my selfish self-centered soul and paid for my freedom with His pure holy sinless life. That always aligns me and puts my head upon His chest in thankful worship and praise to listen to His heartbeat and get in step to get in the rhythm in sync with His. A place of rest.
It seems we are shaped by those divine encounters…leading us to new encounters with the divine.
I like to remember Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Sometimes life is not as complicated as we think. Yeshua lived a grateful, simple life. He spoke often to His God (His Father), He was charitable to everyone He met, He lived the words of life written in the scriptures. We can do this, too.
“…Let be, and know that I am God…” Psalm 46.11
Let’s put on our eternal glasses.
BEFORE sin wrecked howling havoc on man and
the world, “the Lamb who was slain from the creation
of the world” (Rev 13:8) was the embodiment of God’s
forgiveness plan.
In our timely vision, He mercifully gives man the choice
to finally come to grips with sin and the awareness of what
the Lamb had done to atone for it. Until man truly confronts
that choice, the chaos of sin prevails . . . and howls.
God’s hand, on the other hand, is always reached out to ours.
We don’t really recognize this until we truly recognize our own
depravity in our prodigal son moment. Then, when we finally
reach out for Him, He comes running to us! See Lk 15:20
Remarkable!!
Skip you wrote, “If you have never been to the howling waste, you are either blessed or cursed.” Through the years you have taught us to be wary of “either or” propositions. While you may need this spiritual trauma in the “howling wasteland”, I wonder if it is necessary component for salvation/santification for everyone? Now that you have disabused us of the five fundamentals of the Christian faith (thank you), please do not start a new list. I am so averse to more trauma in my life I am even willing to resurrect the doctrine of substitution in this case and let Yeshua’s 40 days in the desert count as my own.
Try it; as someone once said to me “Let’s get Mikie to try it.” Substituting is easier than subsisting.
That is a very good question. Does everyone need a “dark night of the soul“ in order to develop, grow or mature? I’m just thinking out loud here but for someone such as myself who has suffered such incredible trauma in life, could it become almost masochistic. It fits, almost like paying for something I was made to feel guilty or responsible for, what’s a little more suffering after all ?
Michael, I think there’s a fine line between self-imposed hardship and disaster that happens. I think of Luther crawling on his knees or the ascetics perched on poles or stuffed in caves or the monks in Monty Python’s Search For The Holy Grail (which is one of the better thumbnail sketches I have ever found of self-served religion) chanting and smacking their faces with a board. There is only one example in the entire Bible I have found where somebody was supposed to go into the wilderness, and that was Yeshua, Who didn’t go on his own volition (unlike Monty Python’s self-flagellating monks, who, incidentally, were looking for pity and handouts), but was “led by the Spirit”. John the Baptizer did make his home there, but he was still accessible: he came down to the Jordan crossings regularly to preach. Everybody else in that good Book that I have seen, Old or New Testament, self-served their wildernesses, like a sort of temptation for God to “come and find me HERE!”. Well, some of them got told to just stay there, some of them did get met there but they also got scolded for being there and some of them got ignored until they got sick and tired of being sick and tired and wandered out again because they had decided to obey.
In my life, I see that the wilderness was where I started out, yes, but I was not supposed to stay there! The systems of the world are all built, like Egypt, in the wilderness of chaos without God: dependent upon the ‘floods’ of conditional ‘works’ to appease the Nile gods (powers that be) of this world. I think we all at least start out in that wilderness, but it is not where we belong. Further, we have to learn to quit participating with (complying with the conditions of) systems built in these unsustainable places, too, because they are all substitutes for trust in God and true community.
I know I continued to participate in my disaster right up until I decided to own my part of the problem. The day I decided to fully repent and obey, the storm clouds started to clear. When I got out of my own way, I saw that it was my own feet that I kept tripping over. When I quit fussing about not having the onions of desert-like Egypt and decided to turn around and face my giants, I started getting the grapes, too, as a side benefit. Most importantly, these days, when I find myself in a chaotic space, I know I am PROBABLY facing the wrong way and wanting the wrong things. Time to quit running already!
In regards to the dark night of the soul, suffering etc. etc. I just (re) read the introduction of The Dark Night of the Soul and Gerald G. May really helps clarify this experience. It’s easy to get all wrapped up in this because it gives you a false impression of sanctifying yourself. It’s so easy to fall back into the trap of where Paul addresses the Galatians by saying, “oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you….”.