As a student of the Bible, I am embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of the actual meaning of Mount Horeb. It has always been clear from the text that Moses led his flock into the wilderness, or as the King James Bible puts it, “the backside of the desert,” but I have never noticed that Mount Horeb, a holy place of Israel, is itself a wasteland. I guess I have always assumed Horeb to be an oasis within the wilderness. The picture here is of Moses, for some weird and inexplicable reason, leading his flock out of the green pastures into the desolate wasteland. It’s bad shepherding. It simply makes no sense. You would think that something as strange as God taking up residence in desolation and inviting Israel’s future leader there for an intimate conversation would be the kind of thing that I would remember or at least the kind of thing that wish I could forget.

I confess that twenty years ago the reality of Mount Horeb was just the sort of thing I was wired to miss, not only because of the way I was taught to read Scripture, but because of the full-throttle implications for my life. Today, I find this insight strangely comforting and I am learning to slow the text down and pay attention to counter-intuitive details that turn life on its head.

I love the poetry of Moses being wooed, beyond his awareness, into a desolate wasteland at the backside of a desert. He abandons green pastures, puts his entire flock at risk, and all of this, for no apparent reason. The whole picture is rather absurd. Think about it. Moses leads his flock out of plenty into poverty, only to be called into a role that he has no interest in performing. On the other hand, such a journey is consistent with what I know of leadership and it is consistent with what I know of God. In fact, such absurdity is normative behavior for God.

God likes to make his home in the desolate wastelands of the world and I am learning to take comfort in this. The importance of this is magnified when we consider the fact that 1 billion people (that’s one out of six people) live in the backside of prosperity in slum communities around the world, and this number is expected to double in twenty years.

I am grateful to be associated with a growing number of grassroots leaders who are teaching me how to talk with God in the those places that have been labeled “wastelands.” They are teaching me how to talk with God in the desolate places of my own life, culture, family and even the desolation of my own faith. Perhaps we’ve got our labels all wrong. Perhaps what we call green pastures are wastelands to God, and what we call wastelands are the green pasture of his presence. Or perhaps God simply enjoys a good conversation and knows when and where to have it.

Kris Rocke
Serves as director of Center for Transforming Mission
Bumps into Reality by accident, most of the time
Heard God laugh once