Carefully patting the dirt around the base of the seedling, we stepped back to observe our work. Six years old, I was helping my dad plant a small weeping willow in the center of our otherwise barren backyard. When we moved soon afterward, I didn’t understand why the tree couldn’t go with us. I thought it was for me. Ten years later, when we moved yet again, our new backyard was beautifully landscaped, and in the very center stood—you guessed it—a magnificent weeping willow. It was as if my simple sacrifice years before—leaving that prized willow sapling behind—had somehow been rewarded.

During Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry, Jerusalem had been besieged, the land destroyed, and some of its finest taken into captivity. God Himself had told them to settle in for a long haul in a foreign land (Jeremiah 29:4-6). The faithful remnant must have wondered where God was in the midst of the chaos. For few willingly embrace surrender when living in the expectation of a promise.

God, however, remains insistent that we live in His will, not our own. Out of great love, God takes us to places of seemingly no return in order to make us totally dependent on Him (Hosea 6:1-2). In the moment, no amount of posturing or spin can make desolation seem a blessing. And yet, in truth, it is with God.

We can sometimes get drawn into a sense of entitlement. We feel as if God “owes” us. That’s why we need desolate places in life. The sacrifices in the journey can often be excruciating, sometimes feeling much like death.

But it is in these places we learn the holiness of surrender. To give up what we wanted to keep—without condition. We learn to hope, believing that God’s restoration is greater than any discomfort we may feel today.