Where Hearts Are United


Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.--Exod. 4: 17.

The words were spoken to Aaron, the brother of Moses. And the common participation in a desert experience was to knit the hearts of these two brothers as they had never been knit before.

Aaron had doubtless met Moses hundreds of times previous to this meeting in the wilderness. They had doubtless been in common intercourse during the time Moses lived in the palace as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Maybe Aaron had been a guest at the palace on many gay and festive occasions.

But their meeting in the quiet and lonely region of Mount Horeb was to draw them together as they had never hitherto been drawn together. It was to reveal each to the other in a new light, and unite them in the bonds of a new understanding of each other, a new sympathy and comradeship.

In the story of the Exodus you see these two join hands in that great adventure, and through the days and years ahead, amidst great trials and hardships, standing side by side as true brothers.

It is not in the halls of gaiety and mirth that the deepest friendships are formed, but rather in the desert places of life where we become mutual participants in some common sorrow or bereavement.

To understand and appreciate a man, to form any real attachment for him, you must share with him some desert experience. Not the sunlit road, but the road in the wilderness, is the road to real friendship and comradeship.

When Moses and Aaron met in the palace, it was as a meeting of prince and plebeian. They never met as real brothers until they met in the wilderness. And so of all of us--we have to meet in the wilderness before we come to know one another as real brothers.

Is it not true of a husband and wife that, before they really know and appreciate each other, they must share some pain or grief?

In the wilderness of isolation enforced by adversity or sickness or bereavement--there is where hearts are united.