What do you do when there's nothing to do? Deep-dive into work. Exercise. Plan every part of your existence for the next 6 months. Dwell on your non-usefulness. Avoid all of everything. Doom-scroll.

Like the Israelites, God sometimes has to force us into compliance. He doesn't do it with violence but in a rather more gentlemanly way. He makes us wait. Wait until we are impatient. Wait until we are frustrated. Wait until we are fed up. Wait until we release.

Waiting isn't punishment - however tempting it may be to believe that it is. Even in the waiting, my brain understood that I was not being punished, but my heart refused to accept it could be anything else. It wasn't until I finally stopped fighting the wait that I found what God wanted me to see.

It is in the waiting we are forced to see who God is. What He does. How He loves.

As I live and breathe, I NEVER related the waiting to the wilderness. You read that right; I'm a saint who doesn't get it...until I do. The wilderness is hard, dry, and unyielding. It wasn't until I gave up trying to control the waiting that I truly realized the waiting is a place GOD takes you, to be with GOD, to understand GOD. You don't volunteer to go there. You obey the command to go.

When Elijah was sent to the wilderness, he was running scared. He came from Mount Carmel. You all know that story: Baal and his prophets were running things and Elijah kicked back on them. He challenged the prophets in a head-to-head, winner takes all battle of gods. He was so in tune with the one and only God, that when asked, God IMMEDIATELY sent fire from heaven to consume the altar that had been prepared. The story isn't done though! He arrested the prophets and took them down the mountain and slaughtered all of them. What an incredible story! But Elijah ran away. He was scared for his life when Jezebel threatened him; so he ran. Into the wilderness where he met God - again. God provided him food and drink and he rested there until he was calmed down enough to hear instructions from the Lord. 1 Kings 18 & 19