“‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. 20 The wild animals honour me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, 21 the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.” (Isaiah 43:18-21)
Sometimes, in my daily readings, a single phrase or image or word in a verse takes hold of my imagination and I lose myself in it for a while. This week a phrase from Isaiah 43:19 gave me such an experience: “I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” I think I was likely alert to the phrase having just finished reading Ben Macintyre’s history of the SAS. (His book, ‘SAS Rogue Heroes,’ has recently become a TV adaptation too.)
The early chapters detail the formation of the SAS and their first engagements in North Africa in partnership with the LRDG (Long Range Desert Group). Key to the success of both groups was learning how to navigate accurately across hundreds of miles of unmapped, featureless desert terrain with no landmarks and frequent geological anomalies that rendered compasses useless. In the aftermath of those early operations, some SAS teams and individuals found themselves separated from their units. They had to find a way on foot to reach unmarked food and water caches or arbitrary rendezvous coordinates miles into the desert. It is incredible that any of them survived. To discern and follow ‘a way in the wilderness’ where there were no way markers and there was no road was crucial. To see no ‘way in the wilderness,’ to find no water ‘in the wasteland,’ was to have no hope.
I think the phrase from Isaiah 43:19, coupled with the recorded experiences of those SAS survivors, had also taken hold of me in pastoral parallels. What hope is there for the one struggling with unending mental or physical health issues? What hope is there for the one crushed by insurmountable debts? What hope is there for the one trapped in an abusive relationship? Where is the ‘way in the wilderness’ and the water ‘in the wasteland’ for those in a relentless desert of pain or anxiety or fear?
Isaiah 43:19 gives me words to pray and a hope to offer. Our God is the God who makes “a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Do not give up dear ones. There is One who is making a way. There is One who is giving drink.