THE GOD OF THE DESERT

“One of the brothers asked Abba Daniel, ‘What shall I do, father, for I am not acting like a monk at all. I eat, drink, and sleep carelessly, I have evil thoughts and when I say my prayers my mind wanders from one thing to another. I came to the desert but remain a worldling and will never know the peace of the fathers here.’ The old man said, ‘Sit in your cell and do what little you can do untroubled. By remaining in your cell for the name of God, and guarding your conscience, you will find the same peace Abba Anthony has.’ "-from The Lives of the Desert Fathers

For years I lived in the desert of southwest Texas. I was a Boy Scout there. While other boys scaled the mist-shrouded heights of Pike’s Peak and explored the rocky coastlines of Maine, my troop went on desert hikes. Others remember tracking animals through thick forests or setting up camp in view of Crater Lake. The most notable day of my scouting career was when our troop was, to a man (or “to a boy” I guess), routed by a pack of angry and ugly javelina hogs. I don’t like the desert.

The desert doesn’t compromise, doesn’t yield; it’s harsh and hot by day and harsh and cold by night. The abbas and ammas who went into the desert (and they still go there, today) went because it’s harsh and unyielding. They didn’t want compromises, they weren’t interested in balancing the various aspects of their lives; they went to find, amid the blistering rocks and waiting scorpions, the Fire that burns everything unnecessary from the soul.

For all the several score of famous saints whose holiness was hammered out on the desert’s anvil, there were countless thousands whose lives consisted, not of heavenly visions and demonic temptations, but of plodding, daily, unexciting virtue.

Abba Daniel received one such. “I don’t act like a monk at all,” he moaned. “I came to the desert to be like Abba Anthony but I behave more like my cousin Joey in Cairo.”

The knowing abba replied, “You have a place to be: be there. You have things to do: do them. Be there and do them in the Name of God, and God will see. Persevere in what you can do, and God will give you the peace you seek.”

A kind verse in the Psalms says: “He knows whereof we are made; He remembers that we are but dust.”

You and I may believe we’ve achieved some knowledge of God and spiritual insight in our lives, but most of what we think we know is illusory. The truths about God aren’t found on the backs of cereal boxes or in cute internet stories.

God isn’t an indulgent uncle who slips us a C-note now and then, saying “Go out and have a good time.” He’s God of the harsh desert, Who burns and scalds and hammers our souls out on His anvil of love—if we have the guts for it. But He’s the God of rushing mountain rivers and gentle spring breezes, too. “He remembers we are but dust.”

Sometimes you and I can follow Him for forty days into the desert, imitating Jesus, squaring off against temptations. Other times, we just need to be where we are, doing what we do, like the nameless monk. When we pick up the kids and cook supper and wash the clothes for Jesus’ sake, there is in that a reward. Not the fiery reward of the desert (that will come later), but it turns out “the Peace of God, which passeth all understanding ,” isn’t a reward at all. It's a Gift, coming from the Lover of Mankind, to all who look to find it, plod they never so slowly.