“Streams in the Desert”
a sermon by Kyndall Rae Rothaus,
concerning Isaiah 35:1-10
for Lake Shore Baptist Church, Waco,
on December 11, 2016
In high school, like most teenagers, I spent a lot of time hanging out with friends, playing sports,
watching movies, and reading and rereading the Old Testament. Exodus, Numbers, Isaiah,
Hosea, Habakkuk . . . you know, the popular stuff.
Isaiah 35 was my favorite passage of Scripture for a long time, and I’d like to tell you why. First
of all, you should know I was sort of a serious kid—like an aged soul in a teeny, tiny, wrinklefree body. I was someone whose insides weighed a lot more than the rest of me, like an astronaut
with feet on the moon but a soul on Jupiter. There’s always been a lot of gravity in me.
Anyway, when I was younger I didn’t know anything about the dark night of the soul, that
phrase famously used by St. John of the Cross to describe a state of spiritual crisis. I’d never
even heard of the dark night of the soul. I had no name to call it, but I experienced it. Some
might think teenagers haven’t lived enough life yet to really suffer emptiness in that way, but
they can. They definitely can.
This is the story of how it happened to me: God, who had been so important to me all my life,
suddenly went missing. I couldn’t hear him or feel him or sense him anymore. It used to be the
case that God was a great comfort to me, a subtle but reassuring presence I could tune in to and
talk to. Then one day I turned to talk to him, and there was nothing. That’s how it felt and how I
experienced it—God’s crushing absence, God’s deafening silence. I felt so alone, and I didn’t
know what had happened or what I had done wrong.
I imagine it could have been helpful had I been exposed to the language of “dark night of the
soul” and known it was a common experience for people of faith. But I knew no such thing. And
so, as I often did, I turned to Scripture to find a vocabulary for what was happening to me and in
me. Sara, my best friend at the time and fellow kindred spirit, was also on a quest for words that
could give meaning to our inner confusion and turmoil. They say you can survive anything if you
can give it meaning. We didn’t know that either. We just followed our instincts.
Over and over and over again, our instincts landed on the same biblical words—desert,
wilderness, drought, famine. These themes fit our internal landscape—dry, barren, thirsty,
sweltering. We discovered God’s people were frequently found in deserts and drought. We also
read that even when they were wandering in the wilderness, convinced and complaining that God
had abandoned them, it always turned out that God was with them all along.
Every once in awhile something real spectacular would happen to God’s people, but most of the
time the miracles were sorta small and quirky—like manna from heaven or water from a rock—
more strange than glamorous and more temporary than definitive, meaning the Israelites had to
keep trusting that more help would come, which, by the way, was NOT the way they wanted to
relate to God. No one says, “Give us this bread, our daily bread,” and means it. What we are
really asking is, “Give us a life-time supply of bread, O God, plus a bit extra for parties and latenight snacks. Nothing extravagant. Just enough bread so that I never, ever have to worry again.
Please and thank you. Amen.”
Watching the Israelites grumble and complain, grumble and complain, never satisfied, Sara and I
decided to scale back our wanting for a season and just be grateful for a single serving of manna,
should we find one.
That practice turned out to be a bit of wisdom that’s helped me to cross many a wilderness in my
life without completely losing my mind or being swallowed up by despair. If you take a break
from hunting far and wide for THE Solution, The Answer, The End of Suffering, you might
suddenly spot a tasty morsel lying right at your feet for the taking, which solves little but
replenishes you all the same.
And so it turned out that desert, famine, wilderness, and drought weren’t our only words. We had
other words too. Words like manna, like hope, like daily bread, like provision, sustenance,
enough.
We also found out that much like the Israelites, we eventually got sick and tired of manna. We
tried to be ever so grateful, but after awhile our bellies ached for more and our feet were sore
from all the endless wandering, and we were hot and bothered and tired, and very possibly lost.
Our vocabulary expanded a little further. We added to the mix: Promised Land, milk and honey,
deliverance, oasis, water, rain. We wanted more than a respite; we wanted to go home. We
started memorizing just about every rain-promise we could find in the Bible and saying them
often to one another.
One of my personal favorites? “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall
rejoice and blossom. Waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert; the
burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground, springs of water.”
I said those words over and over again for months. And I remember clearly the day it happened,
the day the desert turned to water. I was sitting on the floor alone in an empty church sanctuary
with my prayer journal, like an ordinary teenager, when suddenly, or maybe it was slowly—I
know it was softly—I had this sensation that the desert was fading.
I don’t have any idea what it was about that specific moment in time. Nothing big had just
happened; my external circumstances hadn’t changed. I remember quite distinctly that it did not
feel like I crossed over from wilderness to Promised Land. It did not feel like I had arrived at a
destination at last or like I was in some new and foreign place. I remember that it felt like the dry
sand BECAME water, like flowers were blooming in my desert, like the very source of my pain
turned into a source of life. It was like RAIN from a cloudless sky. Sounds strange, perhaps, but
for me, real and true and welcomed.
Here is what I think I’ve come to understand about dark nights of the soul: Your first time
through a desert can be the worst. You haven’t got a map or a canteen, but worse than that you
don’t know that the heart will find a way. You don’t know about manna or heaven-sent quail.
You don’t know. You don’t know the words you’ll need—drought, desert, dark night of the soul,
daily bread, dry land, water, rain, promise, guide.
When you encounter the second desert, and the third, and the fourth—well, it doesn’t get easier
exactly but you start to understand the terrain a little. And by then you know a thing or two about
joy.
You know now that joy often comes in small packages and at unexpected times. Joy, especially
desert joy, is less like arriving in the mythical Promised Land and more like trudging through the
thirsty sand when suddenly, there’s a stream! Joy is like sitting in a desert and watching with
bewilderment as flowers bloom. Joy is when you’re in utter despair, but oh my stars, you have
such friends, and they are treasures. Joy is when, even while grieving, something makes you
genuinely laugh. Joy is like the world might be ending, but meanwhile there’s a baby being born,
or like God seems to have abandoned us, and yet there’s this itty-bitty body in a manger drawing
a crowd of shepherds and angels to its makeshift bed singing “Peace on earth; goodwill toward
all.”
After being in the desert, now you know that if you’re always waiting for something BIG,
myriads of lower-case joys will slide on by, unobserved and un-tasted. Instead of waiting for the
Great Solution, for your problem to be fixed or your heartache to end, or your issue to go away
or your question to be answered, you go ahead and take delight in what you have.
Joy is like manna—if you don’t gobble it up the day it appears, it is gone. You can’t really
sustain yourself on day-old joy—it will start to mold. Joy has no shelf life; you can’t save joy for
a rainy day. Joy, like mercy, is new every morning, new every morning, and whether this
morning you uncover an ounce or several pounds of joy, the best choice you can make is to savor
it. Savor it now before it escapes you.
Mary Oliver says,
“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
Beloved, when you stumble across joy, don’t hold back. Dance. Clap. Shout. Write a thank you
note to God. Hug a stranger. Sing your favorite song. Hum. Wiggle. Smile. Laugh.
We don’t celebrate the Sunday of Joy during Advent because the waiting is OVER. Most of us
are still waiting for something, and for some of us the wait is a strong ache that weighs on the
soul. But even in the wait, there are occasions for JOY. Some of the joy is found by hoping in
promises yet to be fulfilled. Some of the joy is right here and now, in this present moment. Some
of the joy is in manna that points beyond itself to the Bread of Life, in drops of water that point
beyond themselves to the Living Water.
Whether the current landscape in your soul is lush and green and vibrant, or whether it is cracked
and dry and barren, or somewhere in between, I believe there’s a river of life that flows beneath
your soil or sand, looking for a way to bubble upwards into your life. I think there’s Eternal,
Living Water hovering like angels in the sky watching over you, looking for the right moment to
descend like rain. In other words, I believe in Jesus, the advent of God.
And, you know, sometimes my belief is feeble, and sometimes my belief is strong, and
sometimes my belief goes missing for a while. One thing that sustains me through all the varied
terrain of the soul is that I also believe in joy, meaning I find it worthwhile to rejoice at every
drop of water and every bite of bread, because Jesus didn’t come so that we would believe. He
came so that we would live.
Did any of you sing this song when you were a kid?
I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me. It makes the lame to walk and the blind to see. Opens
prison doors, sets the captives free. I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me.
Spring up, O well, within my soul. Spring up, O well, and make me whole. Spring up, O well, and
give to me, that life abundantly.
Whatever joy you are able to experience today, it is a mere drop from a wide river. Taste it and
rejoice. Sing with me this time?
Let us pray: O Living Water, our souls are so often thirsty, and the world around is parched for
love. We want to help, but we cannot give cups of water to the needy if we ourselves are dry.
Take us to the river whose streams make glad the city of God. Dunk us in the water or sprinkle
us with droplets—just do not let us remain depleted and waterless. Sustain us through the dry
spells. Lead us through the desert with manna like a breadcrumb trail. Help us not to rush, but to
savor each and every blessing, however small. Give us this day our daily bread, and then a little
more if you would, so we can share. Amen.