Oh, what interesting things we see and learn from the experiences we have. I had the opportunity to spend a month in Arizona on the Arizona Trail, an 800-mile trail that goes from the Mexican border all the way up to Utah. I journeyed about halfway on this trail to Roosevelt Lake and hope to do the rest of it this coming fall. It was an adventure, both physically and spiritually.
Along the first half of the trail, the hiker walks the Arizona desert. When one traverses a trail in desert-like conditions with heat, nonexistent humidity, limited water sources (some of my sources came from cattle troughs), and thorns everywhere, a Christian can’t help but draw deeper connections to it and to the sufferings of Christ when He was here on earth. Jesus spent forty days wandering around in the wilderness, undergoing all manner of temptation, and it frequented my mind as I traversed the trail, shouldering my backpack, walking the sand and rocks among the cacti. I thought about how tough it is to find water out here, how much you cough because your throat dries out or how the intense sun reacts with your skin to cause ugly rashes and swelling. How much the wind will buffet you and even turn your lodging like my tent upside down so that I had to camp out in the open.
Then of course the thorns that were everywhere from a landscape covered in cacti.
Thorns that get into your hands, get into your backside when you think you’re sitting on quiet ground and you’re not. I had one of the thorns from a cholla cactus pierce my skin and it hurt for twenty minutes. One thorn.
I had several tinier thorns that got embedded in my fingers when I picked my hiking poles off the ground I didn’t remove them quickly and left there actually caused a reaction and my skin swelled. They were poisonous. It required me to pull out my small little jackknife to scrape out the thorns to relieve the pain. Just thinking about what Jesus suffered with having a crown of thorns, I couldn’t begin to imagine after just these encounters. He went through the desert and beyond. He is acquainted with grief and with suffering. He understands.
A desert walk brings to mind so much. And gave me a new perspective of what it means to not only go through a desert walk but to see through to the better things that we discover. Beauty and satisfaction of having endured it and survived. Of life and salvation and then on to eternity.