Have you ever gone through a time in your life when it seemed that God was “sleeping” or perhaps so far off you could not reach him?  Many Christians experience dry spells from time to time. They experience the sense of being adrift in a spiritual wilderness, “apart from God.” Even giants of the faith confess to this sense of abandonment.  In one opinion piece, Mother Teresa is described thus: “But there's another aspect of Mother Teresa's life that is slowly coming into focus: her struggles with faith.

The children of Israel had been held captive in Babylon for 70 years (Jeremiah 29:10), when the word of God came to them declaring that God was “doing a new thing;” something they had never seen before.  God was doing this new thing right there in the wilderness; in that uncomfortable wasteland; a place where they did not want to be.  At the time they must have wondered what he meant.