The Anza-Borrego Desert in the southwestern United States becomes a rainbow of color, a fountain of activity in early spring. Dark and wiry ocotillo are tipped with orange and red. Desert poppy, blazing star, barrel cactus, explode into full flower. Fairy shrimp, whose buried eggs survive through up to twenty years of drought, hatch and prosper with a strong rain. The whole desert goes through ... a kind of revelatory process—disclosing all it truly is. In a way, those wonders have been there all along, just undetected by the unknowing eye.
A desert—though possibly not this view of it—may be an image that comes to mind when we're thinking about the practice of morality in society today, particularly in political institutions. Perhaps moral allegiances seem to shift like the sand. Perhaps spiritual understanding, the basis for moral leadership, seems a dwindling oasis in a wasteland of materialism. Perhaps the midday desert seems lifeless. It is not.
Though not entirely analogous, the spring revelation that happens in the Anza-Borrego Desert hints at another kind of disclosure. That is, the revelation of the divine nature and government, which fosters morality and health as rain prompts desert bloom. God—more inclusive of spiritual qualities than a rainbow is of colors—has it in His nature to make Himself known, to disclose who He is and what He is doing. The nature, activity, and power—the wholeness of God—are here to discern, understand, prove.
