Some years ago Rich, I had the good fortune to study Deuteronomy in Jerusalem with a Biblicist whose mother tongue was Hebrew. He taught us that the ‘Promised Land’ was not a strip of territory, but rather a metaphor for the presence of God, while the ‘Wilderness’ was the absence of God. But, that it is in the ‘Wilderness’ that we learn. And it seems to me that help and a sort of strengthening of faith and trust always comes, sometimes in unexpected ways, when we are deeply troubled. Your example of ‘Bridge over Troubled Waters’ and above all ‘Jesus the Forgiving Victim’ is a moving description of just that!
