What is it about the desert?

O taste and see that the Lord is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!
Psalm 34:8

A trip to the backyard arbor this morning yielded a nice surprise, as the arbor is just laden with bunches of grapes. This is the most growth I've seen from this grapevine, and I have to attribute that to the pruning it was given earlier this year.

We probably have another couple of months before the grapes are ready to harvest. I don't know what kind of grapes they are, but when they ripen, they are still small, but quite sweet.

This morning, I made some notes in my journal while pondering the question "what is it about the desert that is spiritually significant?" So many times when we hear about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, we think of them traveling straight to the Promised Land. Not so.

In Exodus 3:18 and 5:1, God instructs Moses to tell Pharoah to let His people go, so that they could sacrifice to the Lord in the wilderness (desert). So God was requiring that they go through the desert first, and that they spend time with Him there.

Before Jesus started His earthly ministry, he was in the desert for 40 days...sacrificing through fasting, and no doubt in an encounter with His heavenly Father.

What is it about the desert? Why is it that the desert route is the only way to the Promised Land? Why this place that can prove to be precarious because of the challenges it presents?

In the desert, it can seem that God has left you to your own devices and without resources in a hot, dry, thirsty place.
The desert is the place where you can become bitter about having to even deal with it.
It's a place where dreams can wither and die if you don't stay focused on the Lord and what He has promised you.

The desert is the place where, stripped of your own self-sufficiency and your reliance on your own natural gifts, talents, and resources to make your way--you can learn to depend on, and trust God more, as your only source.

The desert is the place where you can have a face-to-face encounter with God, and come out of it triumphantly with power, just as Jesus did.