Lessons from a Desolate Place Pt. 3 by Chris White

     In my last installment I discussed the mass exodus of committed Christians from the cities into the deserts of Egypt during the 3^rd and 4^th centuries.  The impetus behind this movement was to seek a more earnest commitment to the Lord Jesus in a period of time of spiritual shallowness.  But why the deserts of all places?  This had everything to do with the physical and spiritual geography of Egypt.  Today’s Egypt is a large square which takes up the northeast corner of the African continent but, as is the case in many other places, geopolitical boundaries are out of sync with historic reality.  The word Egypt literally means “black earth”.  This is a reference to the land that borders the Nile River and receives its silt and floodwaters.  Beyond this green and fertile corridor lies the dry and dusty “red earth” which roughly translates into the word “desert” in Egyptian as well.  When the Bible speaks of the Israelites or the Holy Family going down to Egypt, they were not hanging out in the region of the “red earth” but rather they lived in the areas that bordered the Nile where the water, food, and people lived.  Because the area where people could live in Egypt was so limited, if you wanted to get away from people and find solitude you had to head for the desert.  But mind you, it wasn’t a super long journey.  Next time, we’ll take a look at the spiritual geography of the Egyptian deserts.