Titus Canyon You say there’s a plan and a future for me.
I’m lost in the desert and cannot see.
I try to follow and understand your will.
I have no answers, just wait, be still.

Running away to no avail.
Resisting the desert, God will prevail.
Turning and running is futile at best.
His plan beckons, his promised rest.

His plan of love to draw me close.
The Desert of Love for me He chose.
Vaguely I see my desert gloom.
Repent, rejoice, God’s will to bloom!

God’s Desert of Love, his plan for me.
The Desert of Love, he brings to me.
A journey to shape the void in me.
The Desert of Love, he’ll make me see.

Those words swirled in my mind as I was waking one morning. At the time I wrote them I was at spiritual peak in my life, an oasis of sorts. I had reached a place in my spiritual journey to understand, and even appreciate, some of life’s disappointments, the rejections and the suffering God had brought me through to get to this point. It was all beginning to make sense. The prayer-poem that morning was a balm to my heart. I jumped out of bed to write it down so I wouldn’t forget it.

Four weeks after I prayed those words I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I didn’t ask God, “Why me?” like I had on many, or most, occasions, but in the midst of my panic I had a nagging question, “Why now?” “God, why can’t I enjoy a short time of refreshing, a stay at the oasis? Why must I get back on the desert trail, again? What good am I there?” But this time it was different, this time the desert wasn’t as scary, this time the desert wasn’t as dry, this time I understood the desert held something I couldn’t learn any other way. Why was my perspective so different this time? This wasn’t normal. It could only be explained by God’s Supernatural power!

It doesn’t matter if you have an ingrown toenail or a herniated disc, once you’ve developed an ailment, the stories of others having the same thing and how-to-treat-it come out of the woodwork! Cancer is certainly no exception. The first week of my diagnosis I remember hearing a woman say that her cancer was a blessing. “A blessing?” I thought. “How is that possible?”

I found her response very annoying. “Surely she’s exaggerating,” I said to myself. But that desert prayer-poem kept nagging at me. Had God given me those words to prepare me for this? The thought made me shudder and pray, “Lord help me to trust you in this.”

Why are we always so shocked to hear of someone’s death? We spend so much time living our lives like they’ll go on forever here on earth. The fact of the matter is we are all on the way to dying. It's odd, but this thought actually gave me comfort during my cancer treatment, because even if God were to totally heal me, I will still eventually die. So why do I hold on so tightly to this life? Then the thought came to me, we are hard-wired for eternal things, but because of sin, physical death has interrupted this fact; as a result we desperately attempt to deny death, to get back what we lost.
Apparently we are also hardwired to learn important life-lessons in difficult ways. I know in my own life, and from countless others I’ve spoken to, that the most difficult situations have taught us all the most about life, God, and spiritual matters. In fact, these “life-lessons” become our teachers to receiving the harvest God intends for our lives and help us understand what Jesus went through for us. They help us learn to trust God, so his desires become our desires!
Sadly, our tendency is to respond to sickness and other life trials by thinking God is out to get us or that he has forsaken us, and as a result we might even turn away from God and use it as an excuse to explain away our own failures. “If this hadn’t happened to me, then I could have been successful.” “If this hadn’t happened, then I would be happy.” “If this hadn’t happened, then life would be different and I would be different.” “If these things hadn’t happened, then I could trust God.”

Why does suffering take us by surprise? Where do we get the idea that if we pray enough and trust enough, then we’ll be free-from-suffering? It could be a result of our western entitlement mind set, but it certainly isn’t what the Bible teaches us. Think of Isaac, whose father held a knife over his head, or Joseph who was sold into slavery. And of course there’s Job who lost everything; his children, his worldly possessions and his health. What about Stephen, and Paul and Peter and Jesus? Their lives ended in terrible ways, yet why do we expect to not encounter the same?

In Hebrews, chapter eleven, the point of this narrative is not how these great people of faith suffered. The point is they trusted God through their suffering. It would be grotesque to welcome pain and suffering into our lives, but it is necessary to expect it. Don’t call it friend, but rather call it “teacher.”

The prayer-poem, I believe, was intended to prepare me for the desert journey of having cancer. I can now say it was indeed a blessing. God taught me to trust him more fully through it. Our trials have purpose. God uses these trials to make us into the people he intends for us to become so that we can reap the harvest of his blessing. The comfort which Jesus promises is partially for here and now, but ultimately God’s children will be fully comforted in the arms of The Hearer of Cries. Come Lord Jesus!

God will wipe away all our tears and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. Revelation 21:4, New International Version.

© 2006 S.A. Keith. Article adapted and used by permission from S.A. Keith’s writings, “The Desert of God’s Love”, and is more fully expanded in “The Beatitudes – Get Over Yourself And Live A Life Approved by God” to be released in the winter of 2006 from Bible-4-Life.com.

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