Scripture Circles are funny things. They can unsettle our former ways of thinking while simultaneously settling our minds into truths that our hearts have long known. Years ago, when I first studied the Hebrew word midbar (translated as “wilderness”), I experienced the latter. It was as if my head caught up to where my soul had already been- an odd feeling for someone who usually lives head-forward.

I am no stranger to the wilderness. 23 years ago I was suddenly and tragically thrust into the wilderness when my father died unexpectedly. In one moment my world, my idea of God, and my faith were shattered.

I was suddenly faced with the reality that the worst can happen even when you have “done everything right.”

In the months that followed, I found myself not knowing how to move forward, or if I even wanted to. I couldn’t pray or read my Bible anymore. I was angry at God and unsure whether I even wanted to connect with him.

Although I felt far from God during that time, now I can see he wasn’t far from me. I thought I wasn’t praying, but I was actually praying harder, deeper, and truer than I ever had before. It just didn’t look like I had been told it should. In hindsight I believe God was with me, letting me abuse him with my complaints and anger, holding me in my grief, and speaking his love over me until I was ready to listen and come out of the wilderness. Ultimately I was being shaped by this experience more than reading my Bible and praying had ever been able to do.

When I came out of the wilderness, I was less certain than ever about many things, while simultaneously being more certain than ever that God was bigger than I had previously known. He could no longer be contained in neat and tidy theologies.

I now believe this season in the wilderness was the first time I had ever truly communed with God.

a wilderness in the Negev, south, in Israel.

Nearly 20 years later, when learned in a Scripture Circle that the root word of wilderness meant “to speak,” I was not surprised. My brain said “of course” to the thing my soul had known for 20 years. Of course the wilderness is where God speaks to us and we meet with Him- this was exactly my experience.

I see it everywhere in the Bible. From Hagar to Jacob to Moses to the children of Israel to Elijah to Jesus, we see people going to the wilderness and hearing from God- whether they know that’s what will happen when they enter or not. I see the stories of wilderness as more grounded and purposeful than I had known before.

As I have explored the spiritual wilderness in the Bible and the physical wilderness in Israel, I have come to appreciate that while it may be a difficult and harsh place, it may also be the best place to find yourself - at least occasionally. Each wilderness story is catered to specific needs. God meets each person and each group uniquely. The wilderness is the way to the Promised Land, the way to restoration, and the way forward.

The wilderness has the potential to shape us, expand us, and to keep complacency at bay. It roots us in the reality that we can’t just follow a religious formula assuming blessing will follow. Instead the wilderness is a place where the Spirit calls us when we need to be stripped down of all we think we know in order to bring us to a fuller, deeper understanding of God. The wilderness allows us to enter the next season with a bigger capacity.

I may not always welcome seasons of wilderness when they come, but I do not fear them as I once did. I know that when I am ready to listen, I will hear God in the place where God speaks to our souls.

- Sarah Nichols

40 Orchards hopes to create spaces in which we expand each other’s experience of what is sacred, whole, and good. We have a vision for this expansion to begin internally, through having not just one voice, but a community of teachers. Many have been lucky enough to learn from Lisa Adams, whose passion for justice continually brings us to hear the voice of the oppressed in the text.

40 Orchards is excited to introduce Sarah Nichols as our next 40 Orchards teacher. She is not only a graduate of our cohort program, she also comes to us with years of ministry experience, including a seminary education. I have always appreciated the insights Sarah brings to a room as she somehow stays grounded to the present moment while also connecting words and themes across passages. She was a natural choice to teach our next Torah Roots program in the west metro, beginning this Spring.

Click here to register for Torah Roots or here to learn more about Sarah.

- Steph Spencer

Walking Through the Midbar