Thursday, December 11, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Oasis
I will open up rivers on the bare heights,
   and fountains in the broad valleys;
I will turn the desert into a marshland,
   and the dry ground into springs of water.
I will plant in the desert the cedar,
   acacia, myrtle, and olive;
I will set in the wasteland the cypress,
   together with the plane tree and the pine,
That all may see and know,
   observe and understand,
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
   the Holy One of Israel has created it.
In the 1970’s my friends and I spent time at The Oasis in Evanston, Illinois where we hoped to experience renewal and joy. Still there today, it was a wonderful place for me then, sprung up suddenly in the middle of the academic and social desert, a place where we could explore our inner selves without fear. Re-parenting was popular then, and many of us were trying to recover child-like innocence and peace, asking each other to hold us, care for us as children, and read us stories.
In those days I also read The Primal Scream and spent some of my driving time in Chicago doing just that – screaming. It wasn’t road rage; I longed to recover something I lost around age three, when I was taught to shut up in public. After age three I still needed to scream, but screaming was no longer OK. I wasn’t a baby anymore. So then in my twenties, I tried it out alone, in the car.
Fifty plus years later I still need to scream occasionally, and I do experience some internal permission. And I realize this recovery and experience of innocence is a lifelong journey, not a task to be accomplished and then set aside before my dying day.
So there is no hurry now. Singing John Denver’s song, I hear Jesus singing to me:
I walk in the rain by your side,
and I cling to the warmth of your tiny hand.
I’ll do anything to help you understand,
and I’ll love you more than anybody can.”
Little big man, walking through the cloudburst, laughing in the desert, dancing up a storm.
I am grateful for oasis moments, but just as grateful for dry desert sand. God’s presence transcends them both and covers them both with honey, that honey John Wimber described falling from the sky day after day, all over us. Will I wipe it off, irritated and sticky, or can I open my mouth and let the honey drip on in, and be made new? Come, Lord Jesus.
Let me sing too to you, Lord …
And the wind will whisper your name to me,
little birds will sing along in time.
The leaves all bow down when you walk by,
and morning bells will chime.
Your peace you leave with us. Your peace, you give us.
The hand of the LORD has done this,
   the Holy One of Israel has created it.
(Isaiah 41, Psalm 145, Isaiah 45, Matthew 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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