The Backside of the Desert…

Forty years in the desert

Sand storms and dry dusty days and nights…

Shepherding a flock of sheep

Praying for family I’d weep…

Forty long years and then God drew me near…

Standing shoeless on Holy Ground

I bowed in fear…

Quaking at the burning bush I could only hear

I Am that I Am; a voice came loud and clear…

Fire that does not consume, but fills the dark, the gloom

With over powering solitude…

In the desert I found my purpose…

Go, set my people free…

God asked this of me!!!

I learned patience in the desert

I learned long suffering and gratitude…

I learned no matter what I face in life

God is always faithful, His word cuts like a knife…

But He is always right…

The desert is my learning ground

For in it, I was found!

~M.S. O’Neill November 16, 2017

Exodus 3:4-10 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”