FOR MOST OF us, the idea of a wilderness recalls pictures of the Arizona desert or the Sahara or the Northern Territories…

We think of a wilderness as a place where men cannot live.

But what we really mean is that men cannot live in these places the way they would like to live.

This reveals something important about the wilderness, so important that the biblical wilderness is an essential part of God’s message.

The wilderness is the place where men encounter God and, at the same time, it is a place inhabited by demons.

It is the place of God’s revelation of the Law and it is the place of our great temptation.

It is the place of His call and the place of our rejection.

…Many today do everything possible to avoid these places.  Skip Moen

“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.  There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor [Trouble] a door of hope.  There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.”  Hosea 2.14,15

-Mike Benson