and he will make her wilderness like Eden    Isaiah 51:3b 

What a promise this is for wilderness time. Wilderness, a time that is thought of as difficult, lonely, rugged, even desolate--and it says God will make that wilderness like Eden.  God's presence transforms wilderness into holy time, time when we encounter God as closely as we did in the garden.

"and they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden..."  Gen 3

In wilderness God led the way, walking beside the Israelites day and night.  In the garden, God walks among the man and woman, so intimately close.  God walking in the garden; so holy, the God of all walking with us, and yet so ordinary--as though an every day stroll.

As God walks with us through wilderness, we learn the promise, the hope, the joy of knowing God intimately that was embodied in the garden, before we tried to be God.  And maybe that's why we need wilderness, to be taken out of what is comfortable and known, what we build and make and strive for, to find ourselves without a map so that we can learn the ways of the one we follow.  We learn to walk humbly with our God, not to hash out plans and directions ourselves.  We are reminded in wilderness the vastness of God and the smallness of ourselves in comparison.  We learn to read the movement the spirit, not the mood of our environment.  We are given wilderness to be reminded that the one we follow created the heavens and the earth.  "And he will make her wilderness like Eden", where we encounter God face to face.  Where we are reminded that we are dust, but that we are God's dust, spirit-breathed and created for good works.

"and they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden...but the Lord God called to the man and said to him "where are you?"

And as wilderness transforms to the intimacy of Eden as we encounter the living God fresh, unencumbered by our plans, we receive a great gift.   We realize wilderness is not designed as a time to be lost, but as God asks "where are you" we see that it is in times of wilderness that indeed we are found.