Desert

Monday of Holy Week, April 14, 2025

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Desert

A bruised reed he shall not break and a smoldering wick he shall not quench, until he establishes justice on the earth. The coastlands will wait for his teaching.

And this teaching begins in the desert. Jesus spent forty days there, Elijah spent forty day. The Hebrews spent forty years! The desert offers no water or food, but it the place for wisdom. And the rest of us, the “coastlands,” wait for that wisdom. Somehow, we know to wait, because we don’t develop wisdom easily out here where there is plenty to drink and more than enough to eat.

Thus says the Lord God, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spreads out the earth with its crops, who gives breath to its people and spirit t those who walk on it.

But it is the “bruised reed, the smoldering wick” which God calls, out of the desert into the coastlands.

To open the eyes of the blind, bring out the prisoners from confinement, from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

What did Howard Beale tell us all to shout out our windows at 9 PM when the network nightly news was on? “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

There is physical darkness, but then there is the moral darkness everywhere in all who come out of and after the Great Sin, the Human Betrayal of God inside the gates of Eden. Jesus went to the desert to get away, seeking God where he could be found.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, many followed him there.

In fifth century Egypt, long after Moses led his people out of Egypt and Jesus spent forty days fasting, men and women lived out lives of prayer deep inside the desert.  Like me, like us, they sought the world that Jesus spoke of. An admirer named Athanasius wrote down some of how they lived, and what they said to each other.

One day Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and spoke. “I have fasted, I have prayed, I live in peace, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?”

The old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to Abba Lot, “If you will, you can become all flame!”

This sounds like more than a change in lifestyle, but more like a change of consciousness, as Richard Rohr points out. Whether intentionally or not, these men and women suspended what had become normal thinking patterns in the world they came from. They discovered inner peace and contentment through their profound experience of what they often called “prayer of quiet,” building on Jesus’ talk of “going to your inner room.”

For these men and women of the desert, “prayer” didn’t refer to some kind of problem-solving transaction between humans and God, nor was it about saying words to God. Really, it wasn’t “thinking” at all, as we now understand it, because such thinking is too often just reacting to or writing repetitive commentaries on the moment. 

Prayer was the awakening of an inner dialogue that, from God’s side, had never stopped. That’s why the Apostle Paul could speak so often of praying “always” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

In simple words, prayer is not changing God’s mind about us or anything else but allowing God to change our minds about the reality right in front of us—which we are usually avoiding or distorting.  (Rohr, Just This, p. 15-18)

Among many others psalms, Psalm 27 invites me into this listening state of mind, or state of prayer, which always seems to involve waiting.

I am confident of this, that I shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord with courage; take heart! And wait for the Lord.

(Isaiah 42, Psalm 27, John 12)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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