Where is your desert place? Where is your Valley of Trouble? Is the desert place an unexplainable darkness? Is it a spiritual fog that has rolled in and shut off the light God's love? Is your desert place a call with news so irrevocable that any time the phone rings late at night you tremble at the possibilities? Are there questions which cannot be answered? Are there holes in your life that cannot be filled?
Then there are words that God has for you. He has reserved his most tender language for those who suffer. Hosea speaks of God as a lover who has led his beloved into the desert to woo her. In the desert He speaks soft words to her. He allures her, He charms her, He wins her heart. In the desert He gives her back what she has lost--her vineyards and her voice. He says, "[I] will make the Valley of Trouble a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt" (Hosea 2:14,15).
God is (strangely enough) the God of deserts and dry places. He is the God who sees your Valley of Trouble and somewhere in that valley He has made a door. He has cut out of that desolate landscape (like a carpenter might cut through a play set) a gate and He is opening that gate. It is swinging open before you and on the other side of it are hills lush with green vineyards. Soon you will sing again.
