Up from the Wilderness

I spent the day yesterday writing about the Ivory Coast. With the help of the United Nations and French Special Forces and the approval of the United States, Alassane Ouattara finally captured former president Laurent Gbagbo. As one writer, Joseph Klein, put it in a Front Page Magazine article, France enabled an Islamic takeover of the African nation, helping to expand the Caliphate on the continent.

Later today I will be participating in a human rights fair at George Mason University. My friend Jimmy Mulla, the president of Voices for Sudan, and I will represent of all of Sudan’s marginalized people groups and provide information to students about the human rights violations carried out by the Islamist regime in Khartoum against people throughout Sudan. We will also enlighten them about the decades of genocidal war in South Sudan and the Nuba Mountains that preceded the genocide in Darfur.

But for right now, I want to share with you an important lesson that I am learning, not as well as I would like, but over and over again. In the midst of this work, which, I believe is my true calling from the Lord, God calls me every once and a while to “come up from the wilderness.”

The way that Song of Solomon 8:5 asks “Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” indicates to me that the Beloved was already being leaned on, in the wilderness. This is certainly true when we think about our brothers and sisters in the wilderness of persecution. Even as our hearts break for their persecution and lack of religious freedom, we almost envy their intimacy with the Lord Jesus, the Beloved. I think of the Christians in China, like Brother Yun, for whom the Lord’s tender presence was more real than the presence of prison guards who physically abused him. Whatever wilderness we are in, we need to lean on the Beloved.

What does it really mean to “come out of the wilderness?” Like “the poor,” the wilderness of oppression, evil, and things that weary the soul will always be with us. So how do we come out? For me, it is in focusing on the Beloved as the redeemer, the restorer, the healer, the mender, and, the bringer of justice and righter of all wrongs. And to meditate on the related promises in Scripture, like the awesome prophecy in Isaiah 25:

On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine— the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The LORD has spoken. In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”  

Or the scene in the Book of Revelation, Chapter 7, of the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language,standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb…wearing white robes and holding palm branches…” of whom John was told:

Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them,’ nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’  

Finally, there is this irresistible invitation from the Beloved Himself, in the Song of Solomon 2:

“Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come…” 

For me, the winter will not be past until the worldwide Body of Christ is free from persecution and oppression. The rains of injustice will not end until Christ brings ultimate justice to the earth. But coming up from the wilderness I do see flowers appearing, the blossoming of God’s Kingdom all over the world, and I hear the songs of the redeemed, the martyred and the living, who lean on the Beloved.