Our wilderness experience doesn’t simply tell us how badly we’ve offended God, it’s also a measure of his earnestness when he says, “I will redeem you, I will save you!” How earnest is God in his purpose to redeem us from sin? Earnest enough to subject us to pain that purges us. Earnest enough to put us to grief to open our eyes. Earnest enough to burn into our souls that we aren’t self-sufficient, that we’re totally dependent on him for everything. The wilderness, if we have the heart to bear it and the trust to live in hope there, is another of God’s ways of taking us seriously. So anxious is he to live with and love us that he subjects us to the curse of the wilderness, subjects himself to it as well, and finally, in Jesus Christ, he experiences the curse to the full, drinking the cup, and experiencing in the Son the full meaning of abandonment. That God bothers to do any of that should make us stagger, not only at what it says about him but us. Who are we and who does God intend us to be that he engages with us in these ways?
-- Jim McGuiggan
