God's Message for Each Day Copyright © 2004 by Eugene H. Peterson. BEAUTY IN THE WILDERNESS When I was desperate, I called out, and GOD got me out of a tight spot. PSALM 34:6, THE MESSAGE Everything is going along fine: we’ve gotten a job, decorated the house, signed up for car payments. And then suddenly there’s a radical change in our bodies, or our emotions, or our thinking, or our friends, or our job. We’re out of control. We’re in the wilderness. This circumstantial wilderness is a terrible, frightening, and dangerous place; but I also believe it’s a place of beauty. There are things to be seen, heard, and experienced in this wilderness that can be seen, heard, and experienced nowhere else. . . . We’re plunged into an awareness of danger and death; at the very same moment we’re plunged, if we let ourselves be, into an awareness of the great mystery of God. LEAP OVER A WALL