For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.
This month in the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust, we’ll look at the fourth most viewed post. Sort of. You see, when I constructed my “Top 12” list in January, I apparently did not count well, because I ended up with a baker’s dozen. (Hey, cut me some slack — they didn’t make me do math in bible college!) So in order to make the list work, I’m going to talk about two posts that go together here at #4. Surprisingly, they were both about trees of the desert. The first was called “Trees of the Desert: ACACIA” (you can find it here), and the second was called “Trees of the Desert: AR’AR & TAMARISK” (you can find it here).
In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think these posts got so many views; why were others drawn to them? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?
WHY THIS POST?
I would assume that these posts got so many hits because of the tree names. But not only did we get biblical interest in the posts, we also had some other key search engine words in the titles, like “desert.” At the core, though, we had trees that would have been very commonly searched for: acacia tree and tamarisk tree. There would have been much interest for these trees beyond the biblical content, so that probably skewed our results for the “fourth-most-viewed blog post.”
However, I would say that these lessons continue to be some of the most poignant that I teach to my students. I can remember how these lessons hit me originally. The word pictures contained in these lessons are so strong and visually profound that they were stunning to learn in their context. Obviously, the lessons of the desert are so meaningful for so many of us because the “deserts” of our lives are so defining and shaping. Anything that helps us relate to and understand these experiences is powerful.
Even though the newness of those lessons has worn off for me, the power of them in the lives of others hearing them for the first time is still significant. I have recently returned from a trip to Israel and Turkey where the first few days are filled with time in the desert. These lessons still impact the trip participants in the same way they impacted me years ago. So maybe all of those page views aren’t coming from a bunch of botany enthusiasts on Google.
WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?
I hope the reader found encouragement in their deserts. For too many of us, deserts are just a metaphor for our spiritual experiences. I can vouch for the ability to walk through the deserts of the Bible and the ability to connect those very real physical experiences with very real spiritual seasons in our lives. The connection is palpable and the images of the desert provide comfort that words, explanations, and theology just cannot. In a sense, these physical pictures are like God’s “artwork.” One of the profound things about art is its ability to speak and communicate things that words cannot. I find the same to be true about the images of the desert. I hope, for instance, that people can put up a picture of an acacia tree (whether literally or figuratively) and let it remind them of the reasons why we walk the path of spiritual practice with faithfulness.
I also hope the lessons give the reader a call not just to receive the comfort of God in the desert, but to physically participate in that comfort for other people. So often the fruit we bear, the shade we provide, the tamarisks trees we plant for others — these are things that we experienced once from God in our deserts, but the experience also equipped us to be able to serve others in those same places. Oftentimes we received the desert provision of God through other people. Why not be that desert provision — the vehicle God uses — for others?
WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?
For one, I might be more quick to point out how thick the debate is about identifying these trees in real life from the ancient Hebrew. I was recently reading a book about the botany of the Bible and realized how many of their conclusions differed from the lessons I was taught. Like I stated in the first “Trees of the Desert” post, I based my work on the conclusions of Nogah Hareuveni, who in many circles is considered the leading authority on the plants of the biblical world. I have been told that his work is still the textbook for studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Anything else I would say is probably best consumed by listening to my most recent work through the BEMA Discipleship podcast. I spent time discussing this in Session 1 about Torah. You can find that specific podcast in iTunes or by going to this link. If the conversation about acacia trees and spiritual discipline intrigues you, I would recommend listening to this conversation and a follow-up conversation here.
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