The Desert Shall Bloom

The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song.

St. Louis is at a confluence of two major rivers. We have so much water available to us, our water department hasn't even bothered to retrofit our old houses with water meters. Just pay a flat rate. My kids swim in a pool in the backyard, I water my garden every day in the summertime, and sometimes driving over the Mississippi I worry about the times when we've had, and will have, too much water here.

This is not like one of the places where I lived growing up—I moved a lot, and my kindergarten year was spent in a place called Palm Desert, which sat just outside the retirement community of Palm Springs, California. Not a desert like the Sahara is a desert. A few things grew there of their own accord, and other things, like date palms, were easily tended. In fact, this is where most of the world's dates are grown. If you decided to spend the money, resources, and time, you could have grass in your front yard.

For that matter, you could have a golf course fit for Bob Hope. Armies of gardeners and caretakers maintained this life in the desert, but we and most of our neighbors had rock courtyards. Mica and white stone, a few jade plants in pots under the trellis that made our front porch. Tamarisk trees, native to the Holy Land, lined the wash behind our house. But it was gritty gray sand that these plants lived in. It was windy—one of the windiest places in the US—it was dry, and it was hot: summers were over 100 degrees every day, and winters stayed in the 70s and 80s.

The desert did not bloom. Streams did not burst forth. There was no coming of spring with daffodils and magnolia blossoms. The whole year I lived there, I saw no precipitation hit the ground. Then one day in December, our neighbor Virginia called to tell my mom to go outside because it was snowing. Now, I was 5. We'd moved there from Wisconsin. I'd been promised snow at Christmas when we were to travel to my grandparents' in St. Louis. But here?

We went outside, puzzled, and looked up. It was cloudy, which was remarkable in and of itself, and if we let our eyes unfocus towards the mountains at the horizon, we could see the snow. Moving our focal point downward, we could see where the snow, falling, turned into rain. And then a line closer to the earth, but still completely out of reach, where the rain evaporated completely. We stood there together, thinking of home.

I think about Isaiah's words in this context. God's salvation will bring new life in a desert—which of course speaks to our hearts more than to our geography. In the person of Christ is this fulfilled—we read of miracles and conversions, amazing works and God present right there in the middle of that desert. And yet, here we are two thousand years later, and all those things promised in the coming of the savior are not brought to fruition. Despite all our efforts, we still have disease and infirmity all around us. We all face death, and no amount of hope and prayer can change that. Through the incarnation and resurrection, we are redeemed, and yet, that hasn't come to complete fulfillment. We are caught between times. Historically, Jesus has come and gone. Yet we say he is here, and that he's coming again. But where? When?

I don't think that's God's plan for us. While we wait for Christ, we aren't to stand idly around hoping that one day it will all work out for us, personally and globally. In the middle of this passage today from Isaiah is a clue: Strengthen the hands that are feeble, make firm the knees that are weak. While the rest of the reading is about what God will do, what we can hope for, this line is about what we are called to do. Right now. God works through creation and through our hands, towards that time when God will be all in all.

In our baptism, we are brought forth in this glory and splendor of God. We can't waste this. We have not only the words of the prophet giving this clue, but the entire life of Christ cries out to us to do these things, in his name, to bring about the Kingdom of God. Yes, we celebrate Christ's birth so long ago, and we await his return, but in the meantime, how do we live? I suppose we can stand on our driveways watching the snow fall and not touch the ground, wishing for the miracle. Or we can recognize that Christ alive in the world is alive through us, and we are called, in no uncertain terms, to be Christlike, to bring hope, to heal, to transform these deserts—in our hearts, our homes, our world—ourselves.