I have been blessed with the opportunity to see some amazing places in the world. Out of all the unique places I’ve seen and experienced in the world such as the North Slope Brooks range of Alaska, the Grand Canyon, the summit of Mt Rainier to name a few, the starkest place I’ve been to was the North African Desert in Egypt! It was on one of our many trips to Russia that we chose to do an inexpensive detour stop in Cairo, Egypt. Getting the chance to ride a camel around the ancient pyramids was certainly one of the coolest tourist things we’ve ever done for sure. I felt like Lawrence of Arabia. But let me tell you the story of an experience we had in the Egyptian desert.
While being tourist in the monstrous city of Cairo I kept telling Patty that really wanted to get out of the city somehow and experience the starkness of a real desert. The North African desert is the real thing for sure and I wanted to see the with my own eyes and experience the sensation of desolation. It’s too long of a story to tell you how that randomly running across a couple from Australia while shopping at the ancient 1000 year old “Khan el-Khalili” shopping market in Cairo led us to an Egyptian man who hooked us up with a few day Egyptian desert camping excursion (yes, this is really how it happened – and yes, it was a bit crazy). These two young guys picked us up from the comforts of the Cairo Nile River Marriott to go camping in the middle of nowhere (look up the White Desert National Park in Egypt for a good view of where we went and what we saw). On the way to the National Park, we did a stop and spent the night in a desert oasis “hotel” (I use the phrase hotel very loosely here — quite a contrast to the Marriott!). It was at this tiny oasis hotel in the middle of nowhere that we met a young French Catholic Priest who was gathering up about 75 European young adults– (French, German & Dutch) for a two weeklong backpacking trip into the remote desert of North Africa. He spoke okay English which allowed us to get an explanation of what he was leading and why. We found it quite amusing that he with his French accent he pronounced “desert” as “dessert.” But his answer was essentially this:
Young people in Europe today have no idea how to depend solely on God. By taking them out into a place where there was no phone, no water, no shade, no food, they could begin to experience how to rely upon God and God only.
The next morning, we watched this large group head out over the sand dunes for their two weeks in the desert (French dessert) wilderness.
This Sunday we are focusing on Mark 1:12-13. Two short verses of a story that is told also with greater detail in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13. As you prepare for Sunday, I would ask you to read all three of these passages about this amazing story of what we might call ‘the temptations of Jesus,’ or ‘the wilderness temptations of Jesus.’ In the book of Mark you will find that these two back to back stories of the baptism of Jesus (last week’s study) and Satan’s temptation of Jesus (this Sunday’s story) are the two remarkable events just before His public ministry begins. We will study this together Sunday as we are beginning the journey we are calling “Who do you say that I am” in our study of the Gospel of Mark.
Most days I take the time to read a Psalm of worship at the end of my personal Bible reading time. In light of Sunday’s focus message, you might take a moment and reflect on Psalm 63:1 as well.
See you Sunday
