The Joshua Tree - a Desert Parable - Sighing and the Divine Response

Written and published by Jean-Louis Mondon

September. 1st. 2017 UPDATE: Now you can listen to the complete recording of "The Joshua Tree" ebook thanks to an excellent and true work of love, cooperation of my good friend w. c. whitaker who graciously lent his vocal talent and skill as a reader and sound man.

I want first and foremost to thank my Heavenly Father, the Lord Jesus for the Holy Spirit´s inspiration for the birth of a seed planted in my heart in 1988 as I was pondering at the way His providential hand had guided me all my life. That seed, birthed in a simple thought of a lost man walking in a desert grew throughout subsequent years of further learning experiences and the inspiration from the Word of God into this spiritual journey that I am finally able to share with you.

I also want to express my gratitude to all the "Joshua Trees", examples and models who helped shape my life by letting the Truth, the light and the life-giving Lord Jesus grow and manifest the fruits of love, abiding in Him and serving others faithfully in words and deeds where ever He planted them. If you are listening to this or reading the parable, you know who you are.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far the LORD has helped us." I Samuel 7:12.
Link to the MP3 audio file.

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Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God (Genesis 21:33). Here is old Abraham just planting a tree and living by his well. Why are we told this? It is symbolic of what is taking place in his heart and life. The tree immediately brings to mind Psalm 1, which says the man of God will be like a tree planted by rivers of living water, bringing forth its fruit in season. Here is a life that is fruitful, that is concerned about those immediately around and is pouring out blessing into their lives and hearts.

Abraham calls on the name of Jehovah, the Eternal God. If the church desires to do anything to help this poor, blind, bleeding, struggling world in which we live, it will only be as Christian people rediscover what it means to live daily in the strength, the power, the purpose, and the glory of calling upon the Eternal God. This is what writes joy in our hearts, joy that the world is so vainly seeking to find. Abraham found joy, and thus he was the center of blessing to the land of the Philistines. In finding and rediscovering those springs of spiritual strength, he did more to advance the cause of social justice and welfare in the land of the Philistines than any of their programs and plans could have done. 

Excerpt from Ray Stedman´s devotion. Continue reading "This Thirsty World"

Note from the author: Now you can listen to MP3 audio file by clicking HERE

Prologue

 

The Scream by Edvard Münch

  LINK to the next chapter

SIGHING AND THE DIVINE RESPONSE

"The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple. I open my mouth and pant, (or sigh) longing for your commands. Turn to me and have mercy on me, as you always do to those who love your name. Direct my footsteps according to your word." Psalm 119:130-133. 

The LORD said to him, "Go through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst." Daniel 9:4.


Sighing is not the only prerogative  of lovers languishing and waiting for the beloved or the facial expression of discouragement of a student facing homework that is beyond his intellectual capability. It is in fact as inherent to man as laughter is.

All sighs do not possess the same value or meaning. There are sighs that loose their weight in the immensity of a cruel, merciless universe that can lead to despair and even death in the absence of a saving answer. Such is the condition of the human being without God. Can the answer to the mysteries of life be found without asking pertinent questions about it?

In my generation, Nihilism, the Absurd of Eugene Ionesco’s theater, artistic expressions such as the painting “The Scream” by Edvard Münch, the literature and the life style of intellectuals such as Camus and Sartre were faithful mirrors reflecting the alienation, the despair and the perplexity, all, experiences of our modern life. They had no valid and satisfying solution to offer for the complexity of increasingly insurmountable problems. The influence of their promising modern ideologies and philosophies have only produced a bitter fruit poisoning the existence of a humanity close to her last sigh.

However, there is another sigh that comes out of the depth of the human being.
In Ecclesiastes 3:11, the wise King Solomon declares that: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity (the desire for or the thought, concept or essence, of eternity) in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end”.


It is the act of sighing or panting that best expresses this absolutely essential need of a human being suffering from separation in the search for his creator who alone can satisfy his deepest need. ( As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you)
 

The Lord God is the Father (Creator) of the spirits of all mankind (Acts 17:25) and he wants to guide us by his Word, by the sound of his voice on our way back to our eternal home. In Numbers 27:15, 18,  Moses said to the LORD, “May the LORD, the God who gives breath to all living things, appoint someone over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the LORD’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd”. So the LORD said to Moses, "Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him;

Before one can go out, before knowing freedom, one has to find the door to go in that leads to liberty, to eternal life, to our destination. Who is this man, this guide? What is this door, where can it be found? So many questions, so many sighs!

What about you my reader, my friend, are you asking yourself these same questions? Do you know these deep sighs that will only be fully satisfied with a response that would fill the deepest part of your soul? God knows your thoughts even before they are formed in your brain. In fact, it is he who is seeking you. He is just waiting for you to sigh, he understands the burdens that we all bear.  

Jesus invites you: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”. Matthew 11:28.

To be continued:  HERE 



Hope to see you again.

Jean-Louis.