Last week Io visited the desert. Wadi Rum is an awe inspiring vast stretch of desert in the southern region of Jordan. It sits on the King’s Highway. This is the route the children of Israel took as they traveled out of the wilderness at the end of their long sojourn in the desert. The route described in Deut 2:2–8.
The land looks unchanged since they came through the area. The dunes shift with the wind, but the high rock faces look on with disinterest. Those people saw what we see. The place is visited by four-wheeled drive vehicles who are outfitted to deal with the sand. Its a humbling place. The only way to feel is small.
After driving for several hours, we stopped in the middle at an historic gathering spot. Routes from the north and south and the east and the west converge. There the rock face has been pitted with images. The tour books tell us that over 45,000 Petroglys are carved into the walls of the hundreds of acres preserve. Many are thousands of years old. Many would have already been chilled into the rocks as they children of Israel marched through the area.
Some are easy to understand. The language gap, the cultural gap erased by the simplicity of the forms. We use the words ‘camel’ and ‘ostrich’ to desribe the animals, but everyone who sees them knows immediately what they are. The people of Edom and Moab traveled these areas long before Joseph was taken down to Egypt. I feel deeply connected to the past while standing before these images.
It’s strange to sit and look at these pictures knowing that Moses, Aaron and Joshua marched right past them, could have seen them, could have felt the abrasive surface of the grooves. The pictures tell stories, they proclaim presence, as if to say, “We were here!”
God promised Abraham the sand and the stars, that his influence, his family would outnumber them both. At the edge of the world, in the vast desert, there is not much more than sand during the day and the light of the stars at night. Both are shifting, the stars spinning each night and the sand swirling each day. The rocks, the only permanent signposts. Traveling through this world, even for a day, leaves an impression. There is no physical evidence of the children of Israel in these parts, except maybe some of them picked up rocks and pounded on the surface until faint lines began to emerge.
We are all trying to make a lasting mark in the world, but it will not be the images we leave behind, but the image of the one true God written on our hearts and on the lives of those we touch. That is the only thing that can possibly last into eternity.