I never dreamed I’d live by a stream in a desert

No one suffered any mishaps—no warthogs charged out of bushes, no snakes struck, no lions roared and pounced, though they were there and could have.  (If you missed it, click on “Longing for a loo.”)

           

We climbed back into our vehicles and continued our dusty drive across the Great Rift Valley.

A thin line of green trees ribboning through a parched land: our next home

The drive took several hours but eventually, in the gray-golden distance, we looked down into a broad valley, Maasai territory.

Our orientation director, Brian, pointed out a thin line of green trees that ribboned through an enormous parched land. That, he said, would be our next home.

When the pavement ended, we followed a track in the sand. When that faded, we made our own way. Before long, we found ourselves driving alongside that meandering line of trees.

We had arrived in Eleng’ata Enterit, a place you can’t find on the map, in southwestern Kenya. It wasn’t a village; we saw no dwellings. I felt filthy, sweaty, sticky, and dehydrated. Thank God, we’d finally arrived.

I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out before, but when we arrived at Eleng’ata Enterit, I realized that those trees grew there because of a stream, a stream in the desert. One of my favorite devotionals, L.B. Cowman’s Streams in the Desert, is based on God’s words in Isaiah 43:20, “I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

Over the years, I’ve cherished the way 

God provides streams in the desert places of our hearts and lives, 

but this Seattle gal never dreamed 

she’d one day live by a stream in a real desert. 

(Chapter 2, Grandma’s Letters from Africa)