Desert Experiences

“And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go tozvard the south, unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.” — Acts viii. 26.

“Arise, and go unto the way which is desert.” Startling words these to be addressed by an angel of goodness to an earnest human soul. They would be startling if addressed to any man, but they are specially so when spoken to a man of God. To tell the zealous missionary to go into the desert, to bid the seeker of souls to frequent that spot where souls are least expected to be, it was surely a strange, an unprecedented mandate. Nay, not unprecedented; it has its parallel in your life and mine. How often in the midday of our career has an arresting hand seemed to bar our progress, has an arresting voice seemed to say, “Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further.” My strength was weakened in the way at the very moment when I thought mvself to be doing; God service, at the very moment when all I appeared to want was just an increase of strength. Sickness came, privation came, obloquy came, and I had to leave my work undone. At such moments I cried, “To what purpose is this waste?” I asked j Why is my life pent up within this narrow sphere, why are my days confined within these trivial limits 1 I have capabilities for great work, I have powers for great heroism, I have aspirations for great deeds of service; wherefore has it been said to me, “Go down unto the way which is desert”?

My soul, it is because there are moments in which the life of the desert is to thee the fulness of life. Philip perhaps murmured at the mandate given to him, yet it was this mandate which made his name glorious; he founded in that desert the beginning of a kingdom. So is it with thy desert moments; they are moments of the grandest service. Thinkest thou that thy God is only served by working? He is even more served by waiting and by bearing. The heart which can tarry for Him in the solitudes of the wilderness is to Him the dearest heart of all. Methinks that the lawgiver Moses was never more fair in the sight of God than when it was written of him, “By faith he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible.” It was the waiting without a miracle, without a manifestation, without a sign, the waiting for something which reason said was imj)ossible, and which experience said would never come; it was these desert hous that made his life so rich, so fruitful, so luxuriant. So has it been with thee. What thou calledst thy times of waste wTere thy times of highest blessing. In the day when thou saidst, I am alone, thy life was being crowded, surrounded, thronged by a great cloud of witnesses, by the general assembly of the firstborn, by the voices of a multitude which no man could number. Thou wert greatest when it seemed to thyself that thou wert lowliest; thy darkness was thy day, thy cross waa thy crown, thy thorn was thy flower, thy desert was the city of thy God. “Bless the Lord, 0 my soul.”