The Clearing After the Summit

In 2019, Keisha Dawson stood on the stage at Howard University's School of Divinity, diploma in hand, her mother weeping in the third row. Three professors had told her she was one of the most gifted students they had seen in years. Her advisor clasped her shoulder and said, "You were made for this."

Forty-eight hours later, she was sitting on the floor of a bare apartment in rural West Virginia, alone, starting a church plant in a town where she knew no one. The welcome committee was silence. The first Sunday, four people came — two of them left early. Her car broke down that Thursday. She ate peanut butter from the jar for dinner and called her mother crying.

But something held. In the quiet of those stripped-down weeks, with no audience and no applause, Keisha discovered that the voice she needed most was not the one from the graduation stage. It was the still, steady whisper she could only hear when everything else went silent: You are Mine, and that is enough.

Mark tells us that the same Spirit who descended on Jesus at the Jordan immediately drove Him into the wilderness. The Father's voice — "You are My beloved Son" — was not a shield against the desert. It was provision for it. The affirmation came first so it could sustain what came next.

Every calling passes through a wilderness. But the voice that names you Beloved follows you there.