Waiting in desolation, our spirits are pruned. We learn to search for, and gaze upon, Jesus. Our desires are honed and focused. Our characters are shaped. Just as suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character leads to hope, we may learn in the desolate times how to hope. And in hope there is joy.
Everyone who drinks of the water of the well will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. That water will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. John 4. 13-14
