A story was told of a man named Victor. One time he told a friend that he could tell time by using his piano. His friend did not believe him, so Victor volunteered to demonstrate.

Victor pounded out a crashing march tune on his piano. Immediately there came a banging on his wall and a with a loud voice the neighbor shouted, "Stop that noise. Don't you know it's 1:30 in the morning?"

You don't have to be a genius to sense that time is relative. Anyone who has suffered deeply knows how our sense of time radically changes in periods of acute distress.

When our aches and pains reach unbearable levels, time seems to stand still. It was that way I am sure for most of us when we had our share of problems and difficulties. During those lonely and anxious moments, it seemed as if all the clocks in the world had forgotten how to move their hands.

And we wondered: How long is this going to last?

Perhaps you are asking that same question right now. While the Bible calls our troubles "momentary," to us they often seem eternal. "How long is this going to last?" we cry.

"O Lord, have you forgotten me? I can't deal with this any longer! Take me home or restore my health-but no more of this! For centuries, God's saints have called this kind of prolonged distress "the wilderness."

Exodus 16:2-15 is a vivid snapshot of a people of God stranded in the wilderness. Please note that just a few weeks ago these people were rejoicing over the fact that they have escaped Egypt and are singing praises to God and to Moses.

Now we see the Israelites fearfully complaining of their discomfort in the wilderness. What a difference a few weeks make.

The wilderness was a place of hunger and of death. In the Sinai Peninsula food and water were in short supply. Egypt, on the other hand, was a place where there have been bread and meat.

Israel had already forgotten the hardships of slavery and remembered only that there had been enough food to eat. They had paid a high price for it (their freedom), but their physical needs had been met.

In this story, God once again provided. Israel would learn to rely on God (Yahweh) for food, so they would not fall back into slavery.

The people of Israel grumbled at Moses and Aaron and said, "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt! There we sat at pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."

As the people were stranded in this desert, they were moving back and forth between fear and confidence, anger and gratitude, doubt and trust. They have been in the desert for a long time and their forced wait has caused them to grow anxious about their future.

"How long?"

The wilderness will do that to you. It wrings out the question out of you like water from a sponge. And like water poured out on a sand dune, those questions get swallowed whole without any answers in return.

This reminds me of that new television series that debuted last Monday evening entitled Everwood-a story of a father who lost his wife and moved his two kids to this snowy, small town of Everwood, Colorado. The experience turned out to be a wilderness for the father since he realizes that he needs to fix this rift between himself and his 15 year old son.

I am sure there were times when he said to himself, "How long?" There was one scene that the network showed in which the father was by himself in a boat and he was shouting to the world the question, "What am I doing here?"

I am sure most of us have asked that question before.

I remember back in June of 1996 how I was sad in leaving Southern California because I will be leaving all that is familiar to me. And when I arrived at my first full-time appointment in rural Iowa. I remember having difficulties in trying to adjust to this new situation. Imagine a city boy, born and raised, and lived in big cities both in the Philippines and here in Southern California, placed in a small town that has no more than 110 people.

There were times at the beginning when I could not stand the quiet, the simple ness of life, and the distance that we have to travel to get from one place to another. I remember talking to my superintendent one time. I asked him where the nearest freeway was and getting that infuriating response from him, "Freeway…" (Then he burst with laughter on the phone).

There were moments when I looked at my situation as a wilderness experience. There were also moments when I asked the question, "What am I doing here?" and "How long?" There was even a time when I thought to myself I don't think I will be able to make a return to the Southern California area.

After going through these experiences, I believe that we should look at all wilderness journeys as experiences of purification. We might not know it at that time, but such journeys or occasions prepare us for something special in life.

When I was a student in the early nineties I remember taking a job as a custodian at the seminary and at the church that I was interning in and at first I was kind of upset with God on why He allowed me to went through that experience.

Looking back, I realized now how that job has helped me become a humble person and gave me a servant heart. I don't think my experience as an only child and a spoiled brat could have helped me become an effective pastor. Sometimes, for us to prepare for something big, we have to go through these types of journey.

At the beginning of their wanderings, God could have directed Moses to lead the Israelites by the shortest and easiest route. Instead, they are taken the long about because God doesn't want the people to turn to him too quickly.

God reasons that should the people turn too soon, they will want to go back to Egypt and not be the people of God.

We probably are familiar with all the complaining along the way. The Israelites were, more often than not, unhappy. After all, they lived up to their name Israel, which means "the one who contends or wrestles with God."

I can hear them now can't you? "Oh, my feet are killing me! These sandals are rubbing blisters on my toes!"

"I'm hungry Moses, Moses! What have you done? Did you bring us out of the wilderness to starve to death?"

The crucial thing for us to see in their experiences of the wilderness years is that God wanted to purify them, get them ready to enter the Promised Land.

There was something very special about it, for which their hearts and minds and souls (and perhaps even their imagination) had to be prepared.

The same goes for Jesus, in that he was driven into the wilderness by the compelling guidance of the Holy Spirit to prepare himself for his ministry. As the humble, obedient servant of God, he went willingly.

You see, in all the years between Exodus and Jesus, there was a shift in people's thinking about the wilderness. In the later development of this stubborn and stiff-necked people whom God more than once thought about writing off, Israel came to see that the wilderness was the place to go if anyone wished to discover the way of God.

The wilderness was a natural place for Jesus to go from his baptism. For him, it was just going with the flow, matching his actions to the rhythm of God and the wilderness.

Jesus did not mind being there because he put himself into the heart of God's will. The Israelites celebrated their deliverance from the wilderness with the Passover meal before they packed their bags to leave! They celebrated. Maybe that was why Jesus didn't seem concerned about being in a desert. He knew he was situated in the heart of God's will.

Honestly, I am glad that God gave me the opportunity to become a pastor in the Iowa Conference. For it opened my eyes to new ideas and new experiences on how they do church in the Midwest.

My life was enriched by that experience as I met new people and experienced a new environment. It gave the opportunity to expand my horizons as pastor and as a person living in a new area. I met God in a different way.

So the wilderness became paradise for me after a while. Initially, my plan was to be in Iowa for just a year. But then that one year became two, two became three, three became four, four became five, and then from five it became six wonderful years.

In my experiences in Iowa I discovered that if you see first God's Kingdom or God's will, then all these things will be added unto you. I have been faithful in my ministry in the Iowa Conference. And because of that God blessed me with this opportunity to be back here in the Southland and be close to my family once again.

God may never answer the question "How long?" He may never tell us how much further we must walk through the desert. But if our wilderness journey leads us to him, then the road we travel is as surely a highway to heaven as is any rapid main road.

Who knows when the trip will be over? Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next year. God does not give us an estimated time of arrival. But if we belong to him, he does give us a guaranteed territory of arrival. And from what we can glimpse in the official travel brochure of His Word, the place is spectacular.

The wilderness is not such a bad thing. It is a place where we can get down to the bare bones of being with God, experiencing God's love and care, God's reaching out to us and holding us close to the holy and wonderful. May we all be open to this encounter? Amen