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| Marlena Graves |
As Graves describes, her childhood, for the most part, seemed like one long walk across the desert. But it was in the desert that Graves encountered God.
She tells us: "There are different forms of silence, such as the silence of pain. There are caverns of pain and ends of worlds where what is too horrible to mention leaves us speechless. In these moments, we must allow the silent stillness to do its work. We cannot force speech just to fill the empty void. We must allow God to do his work within this solitary work in his time.
"These are Job times - times when we are too numb for company. Speaking and listening wear us out. Words, even from the well-meaning, inflict wounds. And so we are forced to embrace the silence with all its healing and restorative qualities. We can't rush silence. It's a holy place. It's a place where God appears and where he works to purify and fortify our souls."
Rather than retreating from the wilderness, Graves encourages us to embrace it.
"An anchoring assurance and underlying joy are ours when we know that we remain in our Father's embrace wherever we are, particularly in the wilderness... If we reflect on our lives, we'll see that over and over again he has proven that his nature is to love and provide for us."
Being in the desert, says Graves, brings us to the point that "we know we are maturing when we become more and more content with God alone." The same maturity enables us to appreciate God's son.
And she finds comfort in knowing God is there, no matter the circumstances. "I am struck by how Jesus inhabited the presence of others. He noticed them. No one got past him. His visual acuity and attentiveness to those who crossed his path were unmatched."
Graves takes disconcerting experiences from her own life, and weaves them into a beautiful tapestry.
"All I can conclude," notes Graves, "is that these experiences are often the ways and means by which God infuses us with wisdom and power. When we surrender our suffering and brokenness to God, we are on the path to wisdom and might."
She warns about trying to pigeonhole God into our own template. "How could first-century, biblically astute memorizers of the law and the prophets miss Jesus? With all their studying and theorizing, they should have been better prepared for Jesus. But when he came, most rejected him. The religious leaders who rejected him considered the cross a curse (and they had good biblical reasons for doing so) and regarded Jesus as a public nuisance and an assault on their religious sensibilities. Not being able to fit God into our own sensibilities or understanding can induce fear in us, just as it did in the biblically literate of the first century."
In her own life, Graves endured and prospered greatly from her desert experiences, especially those as a child. And so, as an adult, she is able to experience great joy. "Not only do we leave the wilderness with a greater ability to rest like a sleeping baby who is cradled in the arms of God, but we also become more playful. I am growing younger because the fear and anxieties that were weighing me down, those elements that were wrinkling and withering my soul, are dissipating."
In the final chapters of A BEAUTIFUL DISASTER, Graves' writing becomes powerfully prophetic as she lists the value of the wilderness experience. "You and I can also have joy because the wilderness teaches us that suffering doesn't have the last word in our lives."
She declares: "Wilderness reprioritizes our values so that we prize what's most important. In our wilderness experiences, the knowledge that we all carry in us, vestiges of glory, is deeply ingrained. The holiness of God is in us insofar as his image remains in us"
Graves finishes up by mentioning an important but forgotten piece of church history and theology. She tells us the story of Macrina the Younger - the older sister of Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa two giants among church fathers. They were influential in developing the doctrine of the Trinity and, as such, helped form the Nicene Creed.
Graves cites Laura Swan (author and Benedictine) who states that Macrina's brothers "acknowledged her as the primary influence in their theological education." It was a woman who directly contributed to the formation of two of the central pillars of Christianity.
Graves uses this example to encourage us. "We need to consider our prejudices. If we will not receive God's life because we don't prefer the vessel in which it comes, we may live an anemic Christian life or miss out on life altogether... People missed out on God's life in Jesus because of their preconceived notions of what the Messiah should be. We miss out on life because of our preconceived notions of where life should turn up. Our desert experiences help us to let go of some of those preconceived notions."
Marlena Graves' writing is profound in the way she extracts deep wisdom from hurtful experiences. She shows us, by her example, of how God is the business of transforming the desert into a spiritual oasis.
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