BEMA 27: Images of the Desert — Rotem and Acacia (2025)

Transcription Status

7 Jul 25 — Initial public release

6 Jul 25 — Transcript approved for release

Transcription Volunteers: Sergey Bazylko, Beth DuPriest, Jeffrey Rose

Images of the Desert — Rotem and Acacia

Brent Billings: This is the BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we continue our series on images we find in the desert, where we learn about the rotem and acacia trees and what they teach us about living in our own deserts.

Marty Solomon: Yeah, we’re in a section, a fun little section here in Session 1 where we call it “Images of the Desert.” We could dive into the Book of Numbers—the Book of Numbers really represents this wilderness wandering. And so I think we just decided a way to talk about the wilderness is to talk about the things you would experience and see in that desert, in that wilderness desert.

And so we’re doing all these episodes, a handful that are just images of the desert. So we talked about shepherds and that image of the desert. And the next four images—we’re going to do two in this episode and two in the next episode—are trees. So, four trees we’re going to look at. The first one is the rotem bush, the rotem bush, also known as the broom tree, some people will call it. Doesn’t look like much of a tree.

We’re going to have a presentation in your show notes. That first slide, that first picture you’re going to see in that slide, the rotem tree, you’re going to see like, “Hey, that looks like just a big old sagebrush.” Yeah, kind of does. Both you and I, Brent, we love that photo. That wasn’t taken by you, believe it or not. That was Christi Pedrow who took that photograph and sent it to us. And we have loved it for years. It’s just the perfect representation of what we’re going to talk about today. But you’ve always loved that photo, too, right?

Brent: Yeah, I love this photo. And honestly, in my experience, that’s a very full rotem tree.

Marty: It is, it is, absolutely it is. But that’s it. That is what the rotem bush is. It’s known for—in the desert when you think of a rotem bush, the image that comes to mind in the Hebrewic mind is the image of shade. Which a couple references that you might see this in: Elijah, and the story where after Mount Carmel, Elijah is running away from Jezebel. And we’re told that he goes and he lays down under a rotem bush and he wants to die. So he lays down to die in the shade of a rotem bush.

The rabbinic conversation, I believe. It’s not in the Hebrew, I don’t believe. But Ishmael, when Hagar lays Ishmael down and she walks away to let him die, there’s a rabbinic conversation that says he was laid under a rotem. I don’t know if it’s connecting it to the Elijah story, or what the rabbinical reasoning is there, but the rotem bush is that image of shade in the desert, and not like—I’m in distress. I’m at the point of death. I just want to die, and you find a little bit of shade underneath a rotem. Which is funny because, Brent, we’ve kind of hinted at it already as we’ve talked about that photo. But tell me about the shade that you’re seeing in that photograph. I mean, you jokingly said that’s a pretty full rotem. Tell me about the shade that you’ve experienced in our trips over to Israel about the rotem bush, this broom tree shade.

Brent: It’s not much.

Marty: I mean, it’s such a tree, Brent. Is our depth perception off there? Like, is that a really big tree and it just looks funny? Or what are we talking about here?

Brent: Yeah, I mean, uh when I look at this path, I’m imagining this path like maybe three feet wide that this rotem tree is two, maybe three feet tall if you’re being really generous, and maybe a little wider than it is tall, and this is a big one.

Marty: Yeah, yeah, that’s about right. I would probably put that path—some of it’s narrow at points— at three three to six feet wide. That bush is no more than three feet tall. Absolutely. Brent’s right. It's not a lot. You don’t have a lot of shade to share. What’s the word we talked about with the shepherds in our last episode, Brent? When I think about what the shepherds lead their sheep to eat, the sheep get…?

Brent: Oh, they get just enough.

Marty: Just enough. It’s just enough shade. It’s not an abundance of shade. It’s a solitary bush. You’ll notice there’s not a forest of rotem in that picture, and that’s normal. I mean, you’re not going to find 40 rotem bushes together. You’re not going to find 10 rotem bushes together. You’re going to find a rotem bush by itself. There might be another one within eyeshot somewhere, but you’re not going to find—It’s a solitary bush. It’s not a forest. It’s not a lot of shade. It’s not super comfortable. It is just enough.

I can remember when I learned this lesson for the very first time, I was with RVL. In the desert, there’s 54 of us. He wanted everybody to have a chance to sit in the shade of a rotem bush. And so he taught for 40 minutes while we stood out in the blazing hot heat, just like you see in that photograph there. And everybody got like 30 seconds in the shade of the rotem bush, just so we could experience. And you couldn’t fit two people underneath there. You can fit one person at a time.

That’s the image of shade in the desert. Which again, just I found it so instructive for my American sensibilities, my Western American mind and heart. I think of everything in abundance. I think of shade and I want comfort. I want luxury. I want cool shade. And that’s not what you’re getting with a rotem bush. And it’s the picture of shade in the desert.

And so I have a bunch of pictures, references, should I say. These aren’t going to necessarily use the word rotem in them, but it’s the biblical idea of shade. And I just wanted to go through some of these references of shade to help us think about rotem bush, shade, and desert. So, Brent, give me some references that we have lined up for shade in the Bible.

Brent: Okay, first we have Judges 9. The thorn bush said to the trees, “If you really want to anoint me king over you, come and take refuge in my shade but if not, then let fire come out of the thorn bush and consume the cedars of Lebanon.”

Marty: Okay, it’s an interesting reference to start with. It’s a parable coming out of the book of Judges Chapter 9. There’s this parable about all these different trees. But one of the things that gets said in this parable is this thorn bush says, “Come and sit in my shade.” So, again, you have this image of the heat of the desert. And the thornbush is saying, “Hey, come sit in my shade, come sit…” because that’s where you’ll find refuge, that’s where you’ll find comfort. Give me the next one. What have you got?

Brent: Psalm 80. You transplanted a vine from Egypt, you drove out the nations and planted it, you cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches, its branches reached as far as the sea, its shoots as far as the river.

Marty: Okay, so in this case, it’s not the rotem idea at all. The point of this reference is how much shade, how far it covers—which is a juxtaposition of what they would expect, and you get this same idea of shade being a refuge. I bring these references up because, I think, when you and I read the Bible, and particularly for us that are in an American context, we read over the shade references too easily.

Brent, since you’ve been over to Israel more than once and you’ve been in the desert, do these images stand out to you a lot more having experienced the heat of the wilderness?

Brent: Oh, yeah.

Marty: And before I went, I would read right over them, but now they jump off the page to me. So, what do you have next, Brent?

Brent: Psalm 121. The Lord watches over you, the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

Marty: “The shade at your right hand.” If you’re listening to this episode, just stretch out your right hand as far as it can go. I realize some of you might be driving in the car. Keep one hand firmly on the wheel. If you’re at a gym, everybody’s going to start looking at you funny. That’s okay. Just keep running on that treadmill. Stretch that hand out as far as you can. As far as you can, as far as you can.

That is as far as God is ever from you. Like, God is the shade at your right hand. The Hebrew idea there is that he’s always accessible. He’s never further away than you can reach—so, God’s shade. Now, again, when it says that, it’s not saying complete ultimate relief. It’s not saying the answer to all your problems is at your right hand. It’s rotem bush shade. The relief and the refuge you need for this moment, just enough, is at your right hand. It’s never further away than that. What do you got next?

Brent: Song of Songs 2. Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.

Marty: “I delight”—we will talk about Song of Songs later, and we’ll talk about lovers and fruit, but for now we will talk about shade. She longs to sit in her lover’s shade. I’m trying to bring up all these references. Shade is relief. Shade is salvation. Shade is freedom. Maybe salvation was the wrong word, but maybe it’s not. Shade is where I find that refuge.

Brent: On that first day you took me to Israel, it definitely felt like salvation when I found the shade.

Marty: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What do we got? We got some Isaiah quotes here?

Brent: Isaiah 4. It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.

Marty: All right. Shade. That rotem bush is a refuge from the heat of the day. What’s next?

Brent: Isaiah 25. You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm, and a shade from the heat.

Marty: Okay, so this time it actually references some physical realities—poverty, neediness, and God has met those needs. He’s seen them in their poverty, and the relief of that physical need is compared to shade in the heat of the day and refuge. So that justice, that, “Are my needs being met?” are like that. How about Isaiah? What else you got?

Brent: One more in Isaiah in Chapter 30: Woe to the obstinate children who go down to Egypt without consulting me, who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection, to Egypt’s shade for refuge.

Marty: So, you can also go elsewhere to find shade. There’s a critique here in Isaiah 30. God has shade. But you’re going to Pharaoh for his shade. So there’s lots of things that can give you shade, which is kind of where we started. We started in Judges 9, where the thorn bush was saying, “Come sit in my shade.” It would be similar to Pharaoh saying, “Come sit in my shade.” So I guess it raises a question, and this isn’t a trick question, Brent. I don't mean this to be—there’s an obvious answer. Where are we supposed to go? Where do we go to find shade, Brent Billings?

Brent: I mean, one of those verses I read was God is our shade.

Marty: Yeah.

Brent: So is that the right answer?

Marty: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, absolutely. No trick question there.

Brent: Sounds Sunday School cheesy, but yeah.

Marty: Absolutely. And one of the things that we’ll see in a lot of these desert images. I don’t know if I want to say all of them. I don't know if it applies necessarily in the shepherd image, per se. But a lot of these images that we’re going to wrestle with, we’re going to start by knowing that we experience this with God. Like God is our shade. God is our shade. God is our shade.

But there will often be a second dual nature to this image, which is that God asks us to be that for other people. So, where do we go for our shade? God. But the verse that always comes to mind is Isaiah 32. It’s one of my favorites. It’s one of my absolute favorites. Isaiah 32. I’m going to quote it from memory here. I don’t have it in front of me. Brent will catch me if there’s anything significant that I’ve gotten wrong. But see, a king will reign in righteousness. And how many kings are there, Brent, when we say that?

Brent: Sounds singular to me.

Marty: Singular. Brent’s going to be double-checking Isaiah. All our listeners can, too, to make sure I’m right. Singular king. There’s one king. We would say, probably—we’d probably say Jesus. That’s good. God, Jesus, whatever. Jesus is the king, and rulers—so, a king will reign in righteousness—singular king—and rulers will rule with justice. But how many rulers, Brent?

Brent: Plural—at least more than one.

Marty: It’s got to be more than one. So there’s plural rulers, but how many kings?

Brent: Just one king.

Marty: One king. So we could say, if we were followers of Jesus, Jesus is our king, but rulers will rule with justice. The rulers are plural. So who would the rulers have to be?

Brent: A kingdom of rulers, perhaps.

Marty: Oh, a kingdom of priests throwback. Woo! Yeah, absolutely. There are rulers that rule with justice. And in case you’re like, “Okay, but was that just a mistake?” No, because the next line is this: Each one—each one, that would insist on the fact there has to be more than one—Each one will be a shelter and a shade in the heat of the day, a refuge from the storm, a stream of water in the desert, in the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. 

So Isaiah 32 will talk about how there’s a king that reigns in righteousness, but there are rulers. His rulers rule with justice. We—it’s not just that God is our shade. It’s that God invites us to be shade. Each one of us, each one is supposed to be a shelter and a shade in the heat of the day, a refuge. Each one of us is supposed to be a refuge in the storm. Each one of us is supposed to be a stream of water.

It’s not just God is our refuge. Yes, he is absolutely. We’ve all experienced that. But then God says, I want you to go be this in everybody else’s desert. So, on the one hand, God is our shade. We’ve experienced the provision of God in our deserts.

But I would also ask you this: How many of you experienced God’s provision in your own wilderness deserts through somebody else? God was your shade in the hands and feet of somebody who was that shade for you. We have experienced God’s provision, but we are also called to be that provision on his behalf for other people.

And what I love about that lesson, Brent, when it comes to the rotem bush, is this has been a very long lesson throughout my life I’ve had to learn. I do not like to be around grief. I don’t like to be around lament. I don’t like to go on hospital calls. I don’t like to do funerals.

And part of the reason is because I felt like I had to be an oak tree of shade. It felt like I had to have all the answers. I had to be this huge shade tree and provide all kinds of relief and answer every question and dry every tear and take grief away. But what God invites me to be is just enough shade at their right hand. I can show up and be a rotem bush. I don’t know if I’m going to have all the answers. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to satisfy every need. I don't know if I’ll be able to dry every tear, but I can provide a rotem bush worth of shade. And that’s always been a very meaningful lesson to me.

But we got one more tree we got to talk about before we’re out of here.

Brent: This is a good one, too. Yeah.

Marty: This is a good one. This is a good one. This is a good little episode today. We got the acacia tree, and the acacia tree is amazing. The acacia grows—if you look at your next slide, you’ll see—next two slides—you’re going to see two different pictures of an acacia tree, one that looks very dead and one that looks very alive.

Brent: Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I’d say very alive, but…

Marty: Yeah, that’s about as alive as they typically look, but that’s yeah.

Brent: It at least has some green on it.

Marty: That’s right. That’s right. And that’ll be relevant to our conversation. These acacia trees grow—you can kind of see it in these pictures—they grow at the end of wadis. So what is a wadi? We talk about wadi here in a couple episodes. A wadi is like a desert canyon, a ravine. A number one killer in the desert, Brent? Go.

Brent: Flash floods.

Marty: Flash floods. When it rains in the Middle Eastern desert, it floods because the rain doesn’t have anywhere to go. It doesn’t get soaked up into the land quick enough. And so it just rushes through the desert. And so you have these flash floods and these wadis. It’s just crazy to think about, but that’s the way it works in the desert.

And so you have these wadis that are often, some of them are filled with water every single year. Like some of them are main drainage wadis. Like every year, the way that it rains, they’re going to always see water.

You’re going to have some wadis that—I don’t know, maybe once a decade—it rains in just the right way where water flows through that wadi when it floods. And then when it gets to the end of that wadi, the water spreads out at the end of the wadi. It spreads out all over the desert and eventually just kind of seeps in.

Your acacia trees grow where that water gets to the end of the wadi, spreads out, and dries. The acacia trees will grow in the bottom of those wadis, at the end of those wadis. And they’ll grow in a lot of places, but that’s where you’ll predominantly find them.

They are called by the Bedouins who have lived in the desert for a long time, they are called “the gift of the desert.” Here’s why. The wood of the acacia tree is strong for building. It makes great building material because it’s a strong wood. It burns if you’re going to use it for burning. It burns longer and hotter, so it’s a more efficient wood.

It produces a sap. I say sap. My wife says pitch. We did this episode originally years ago, Brent, we haven’t settled this argument. So I don’t know. Our listeners need to tell us: is it sap or is it pitch? I call it sap. My wife calls it pitch. I have a committed disagreement with her on this.

But the sap of the acacia tree, you can use it medicinally. The Bedouins use it in medicinal ways. It can be a salve for healing or made as an ingredient to all kinds of other medicines for them.

The pods of the acacia tree, they have these little pods, almost like a little tiny carob pod type looking thing. You can boil those pods in water and use them for feed for livestock. I was told that the Bedouins say one kilo of those pods boiled in water will feed a camel for a month. That might be an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

This tree, the acacia tree, it’s the gift of the desert. It is a blessing. But here’s the thing: you saw that first picture, where he said the first picture there, the acacia tree looks pretty, pretty dead. And here’s the thing: the acacia tree can look like that. It can look very, very dead for years.

I’ve been told an acacia tree can sit dormant for a decade. No water. And when the rains finally come, that acacia tree will spring to life. And again, when I say spring to life, we’re talking the green of the next photo. It’ll have its pods, it’ll bloom. But this tree is the gift of the desert, and yet for much of a decade it may sit there and have very little going on on the outside. It can look quite dead on the outside, but it will spring to life.

Now, here’s what I find so moving about this tree in the desert. There was a biblical botanist, a scholar by the name of Noga Hareuveni. I believe he was connected to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His textbook on botany was required reading for years and years and years at Hebrew University. It still might be. I don’t even know.

But Noga Hareuveni was an acclaimed biblical botanist. He agreed with a lot of the scholarly consensus about what you read, about which trees are which. He was adamant that the tree of Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17—if you look at those passages, you’ll notice how clearly those two trees are very, very similar. It’s almost the same kind of refrain that gets used there. Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17—the tree that’s being mentioned there, Noga Hareuveni said, has to be the acacia. And here’s why.

Let’s go ahead and I’m going to have you read, Brent, I’m not going to have you read the entire Psalm, but I’m going to probably interrupt you a bunch. But go ahead and read Psalm 1 for me to close this thing out.

Brent: Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the Law of the Lord.

Marty: Blessed is the one who does not stand, who does not walk, stand, or sit—does not walk in the way of sinners, stand in the place of scoffers, sit in the seat of mockers, but their delight is in the Law of the Lord. So, this is somebody who doesn’t give themselves to the pagan ways, the ways of the world, worldly wisdom, but somebody who has their delight in the Law of the Lord, the Torah, God’s wisdom, whatever you want to call that, go ahead.

Brent: And who meditates on his Law day and night.

Marty: Who meditates on his Law. We should probably do this. I’m not sure where we do this in the podcast, but today’s as good a day as any Brent.

Brent: Might as well.

Marty: The word “meditate” there is the word hagah. Now, hagah shows up in other places. There’s a passage—I believe it’s in Jeremiah—as a hungry lion growls over its prey, though a band of shepherds be called out against it. As a hungry lion growls over its prey, though a band—so a band of shepherds is going up to confront this lion, but the lion sits hunched over its kill. And the lion growls.

And the word for growls in Jeremiah is the word hagah. Now, hagah is a Hebrew word that is onomatopoeic. It sounds like the thing it’s talking about. It is not a lion that’s roaring. It’s not the roar of a lion. It is the low, rumbling growl of a lion.

 <sound of a lion growling>

 It’s this low rumbling. It’s the growl of a lion. You know, that kind of a thing. I can’t get my G to roll right now as I’m talking. I don’t have enough moisture in my mouth. But you get the idea: it’s this onomatopoeic—it’s a lion just growling over its prey, going, “Don’t even think about it. I’m going to eat it. I’m going to eat all of it.” That’s the word for growl. It’s the word hagah.

So when we go back to Psalm 1, Blessed is the one who does not walk in the way of sinners, stand in a place of scoffers, sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is on the Law of the Lord. On it he… hagah-s. Notice the word meditate. I have no problem with meditation. We did a whole episode a few episodes ago, Brent, called, “Creating a Space,” where I talked about spiritual practice, I talked about contemplation, Sabbath, solitude, silence. It should be very clear. I’m a big fan of meditation.

I love the idea of sitting and meditating on God’s word, of being contemplative, of being silent, of praying. I’m a big fan of that. Psalm 1 is not talking about a quiet morning on the front porch with a sunrise and a cappuccino and an Instagram post that says #blessed. That’s not the idea of hagah.

Hagah is a lion hunched over its prey, wanting to devour. This is somebody who does not walk in the way of sinners, but delights to hagah, to growl over the word of God. Like Hagah. So that’s the image here. Blessed is the man—Start all over, Brent. Start all over. Read us Psalm 1.

Brent: Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the Law of the Lord, and who meditates on His Law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers.

Marty: All right. Noga Hareuveni said this tree was the acacia tree. So I want to go back a couple of lines, Brent. He will be like a tree planted by streams of—the Hebrew there says rushing water. It’s a particular kind of water. Like a tree planted by streams of rushing water. When you think rushing water and desert, what do you think of, Brent?

Brent: I think of a flood, a flash flood.

Marty: I think of a wadi flood, those desert floods, rushing water in the desert. That’s where I find the acacia, like a tree planted by streams of rushing water. What’s the next phrase?

Brent: Which yields its fruit in season.

Marty: Okay, which yields its fruit in season, which we read that in our American context. We think, oh, yeah, every season. Every season it rolls around. Springtime comes, the apple tree has fruit on it because it’s time for the apple tree to have fruit. The fig tree, it’s the season for figs and it has figs.

But if this is the acacia tree, if Noga Hareuveni’s right, this Psalm is packed with meaning. Because what this means—When is the season, Brent, for the acacia tree?

Brent: Who knows?

Marty: Who knows? It could be years of drought. It could be years of your life looking dead, feeling dead. But this is somebody who chose to not walk in the way of sinners, who chose to devote themselves to delight in hagah-ing the text, meditating on His law day and night. And when the rains come, when the time comes, when the season comes, what does the psalm say?

Brent: Which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers.

Marty: So it may not be, it may not be this glorious, amazing—but when the time comes, it will not fail. Everything they do prospers. It will bear its fruit, its fruitfulness in its season. I have just loved that picture.

When I think of desert and I think of wilderness and I think of the deserts that I’ve lived in, when I think of spiritual deserts that I’ve gone through, for months, for years, of feeling just like spiritual, dry—blegh. Spiritual drought, spiritual lack of inspiration, lack of the presence of God. But you keep showing up. You keep being faithful. You keep doing—because when the time comes, you will be known as the gift of the desert. Do not lose heart.

And so that’s our discussion for today. It reminds me—we’ve mentioned a couple of times today, Brent. We’ve mentioned these memories of when we used to do this before this was ever a podcast. And we just did this with a bunch of college students. And man, what a wildly great time when this wasn’t a podcast, but this was a class. When there were all these relationships we had with college students, and we taught them these things firsthand. We even dragged some of them over to Israel so they could feel the heat and do all that stuff.

It just reminds me of this thing that we’re trying to do with BEMA, which is these things that we’re learning, we’re trying to give to these young adults, to these college students. It’s where BEMA started. It’s where BEMA is pointed. If you’re listening to this podcast, and we know that most of you, most of you hearing my voice, are not college students. I just want to super encourage you to do a few things.

Number one, think of the young people that are in your life, at your place of work, in your house, at your church, the young people that you’re connected to—I’m not talking about, you know, hundreds, I’m not talking droves of young people. I’m talking one or two people that you know really well, that are family friends, that you have in your home. These are unbelievably transformative.

And I’m not talking about the podcast episodes, although that’s great. If they listen to the podcast, that’s awesome. I mean being a rotem bush and teaching a young adult how to be a rotem bush. We call this discipleship. Pursuing these things for yourself, modeling these practices for those college students that might be in your life, these young adults that might be in your life, and then teaching them. At Impact, we call it pursuing, modeling, and teaching.

BEMA is a part of this Impact Campus Ministry thing we’ve talked about before. One of the things we talk about at Impact is pursuing, modeling, and teaching. When you are learning these things as a part of this podcast, be aware of the young people around you that you can disciple in some of the same learning journey.

You don’t have to have this mastered to disciple somebody in it. You can actually learn it along with them, but do you know what this practice will do for a 19 or a 20-year-old? What it will be like to hagah the Text, to know what it’s like. Can anybody remember what it was like to be 21 years old and feel like you’re doing this wrong because you don’t feel like God is close? Like you don’t feel like spiritual Bible study is working. You don’t feel—does that strike any bells for you, Brent?

Brent: Yeah, and even even in the sorts of things like our campus ministry context.

Marty: Yep.

Brent: I think of our team in South Bend, how they had been trying to get something going at Bethel University for such a long time and just nothing, just striking out year after year after year.

Marty: Sure. Yep.

Brent: And then a couple years ago, something happened, a little flash flood, and all of a sudden they had 50 people in a commuter Bible study.

Marty: Yeah.

Brent: It’s like, where did all these people come from?

Marty: Yeah.

Brent: Were they not here before? Well, yeah, they were but it just wasn’t the right season. And then when it was that season—ooh.

Marty: Yep. Yeah, they were ready. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And those are the things that we think of when we hear these stories and whatnot. So I just wanted to encourage you with that if you know those college students that are out there.

And we’ve talked before about what we do. And I think at the end of most of our episodes, Brent will talk about how we’re supported, like the things that we’re able to do with those college students, the creation of this podcast, all that stuff. It is supported by people that give to our nonprofit ministry, like so many other ministries that you know. And we’re just deeply grateful to the people that give to our ministry.

And if you’re beginning this journey with us, if you’re new to the BEMA journey, and this is something that—whether it’s the podcast itself, whether it’s the resources that we’re creating for these college students and for others and for everybody else. Whether it’s the work of discipling these young adults that you think is so unbelievably valuable and important, we would just love to have you on board as financial partners.

That would be an unbelievable blessing to us. We have people that support us at $10 a month, $15 a month. And there’s so many people that do that it makes a huge difference. And so I don’t want you to feel like I can’t give enough that it would make a big difference. Giving a little can make a big difference. And some people do give a lot more than that.

But if there’s anything that you ever wanted to be a part of in that way, we’d love to enable that. So I think in the show notes of every episode, Brent, you’ve always got a link there that talks about donating to BEMA. Is that right?

Brent: Yes, it’s in every episode.

Marty: So you can always find a way to do that. If you ever feel like that’s something that God leads you to do or prompts you to do, we’re pretty passionate about what God’s given us to steward, especially as it pertains to college students, the university campus, their context.

These are people that are becoming the leaders that God’s making them to be. And if we can give them some of this Bible stuff, some of this wisdom stuff, some of this “create a space so that God can do something” stuff. If we can train them to be ready for their wilderness year, because they’re going to have deserts, I promise you. We all know that.

If you’re listening to this and you left the college age a while ago, then you know that you’ve been through a desert or two, or 10 or 100 in your life.Deserts are going to come. If we can somehow equip these students with some of these tools before they even get there, we’re relatively confident that God will do something in those moments and in those seasons. So, we just appreciate all those that help make that possible for us and allow us to do that work because it’s pretty awesome.

Brent: Yeah, so that does it for this episode. You can find all of those details at bemadiscipleship.com. If nothing else, your podcast app should have those links, but just in case, the website always has everything that we’re talking about. You can use the contact page there. You can find groups.

Boy, that’s another good example of an acacia tree situation. I think of—he’s actually on staff with us now—Mitch, but he was back in that early run of BEMA, he was one of the first groups on our map. And he just sat there in Florida for two and a half years, didn’t hear from a single person. And then over the course of two weeks, he had a dozen people and a thriving discussion group.

Marty: Yeah, right.

Brent: And it’s like, what?

Marty: Yeah.

Brent: I’m just so inspired by those types of stories. But boy, those two and a half years, that’s a long time to wait.

Marty: It is.

Brent: But then, when it is the season—boy. So at this point, there’s a lot more groups on the map, a lot more people out there. So by all means, check out the groups page of the website and see if somebody’s in your area. There might be somebody who’s waiting to have a discussion, and you’re going to be the first one to contact them.

You’re going to be the drop of water to get that flash flood going. It’s so exciting to me. But the groups page is great for that. And thanks for joining us on the BEMA Podcast this week. We’ll talk to you again soon.

Jacque Bhalla: Hi, I’m Jacque Bhalla, a BEMA listener in Annapolis, Maryland, and here’s the prayer from Episode 27’s Companion.

Our Father in Heaven—where there is wind, may we be shelter. Where there are storms, may we provide refuge. Where there is thirst in the desert, may we become water and shade.

May we plant ourselves in streams of living water, digging our roots into the wisdom of the Word, so that when the season comes we may flourish and prosper as living images of what God calls us to be—a gift of the desert, a priest to the Kingdom, a child of God.

Be for us, and may we be, just enough, just in time, to the broken deserts that surround us. Amen.

[closing music]

Brent: Okay, so Marty, tell me again, are you on Team Sap or Team Pitch?

Marty: I’m on Team Sap.

Brent: Well, I hesitate to empower you with this knowledge,

Marty: I’m already empowered, I know. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Brent: But it seems that sap is the one that is developed within a plant and pitch is a distillation of tar or petroleum or similar types of substances.

Marty: Well, see, I knew this, but I am benevolent enough that I’m just gonna let my wife keep believing in the pitch concept. I’m not even going to hold this over her. I’m not going to lord it over her. I’m just going to let her be on Team Pitch. That’s awesome. But we all knew.

Brent: They have similar properties and behave in similar ways. So, you know, the idea is in the ballpark, but—

Marty: It’s just how backwoods Montana folk talk. That’s all.

Brent: And you’re backwoods Idaho, and I’m backwoods Kansas.

Marty: Yeah, we ain’t got—yeah, we don’t have a whole lot to brag about.

Brent: So we’re all backwoods around here.

Marty: I can make fun of them, but I ain’t got very far to go.

Brent: I love it. Okay, well, there you go.

Marty: Yup.