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on my back for hours and hours, expending little energy. This lethargy is habit-forming. The bitter, poisonous waters of self-pity are the wrong place to come to quench a dry soul. And if you float in the Dead Sea or in self-pity long enough and drift far enough, you’ll end up in enemy territory on the opposite shore—in this case, the land of Israel’s ancient enemy the Moabites.
    The rugged mountains of Moab on the other side of the Dead Sea—now in the nation of Jordan—are clearly visible from our Engedi oasis. I find it interesting that the nation of Moab was birthed from self-pity. During the cataclysm that turned this once-fertile plain into the barren place that it is today—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—two sisters were jolted from sleep in the middle of the night andtold to run for their lives. Imagine their panic as they fled Sodom with the earth quaking beneath their feet and the night sky eerily illuminated with fire. Chunks of brimstone rained down around them, and screams of terror and pain echoed behind them as they staggered forward, inhaling the stench of sulfur and death. Their father, Lot, urged them toward the safety of the mountains, shouting, “Run! Don’t look back!” But their mother did look back, and suddenly she was no longer running alongside them. The terrified sisters didn’t dare to turn around to see what had become of her.
    The night seemed endlessly long, the climb steep, but when dawn finally arrived, the sisters gazed down with their father at their ruined world. Shaken and stunned, they saw nothing but smoke and destruction. The catastrophe reduced their home, their city, to smoldering ashes. Everyone was dead. The girls’ faces reflected the same dull, stunned horror that we see in the survivors of earthquakes and tornadoes and hurricanes.
    Days passed in despair and sorrow, until self-pity began to whisper to the sisters that God had abandoned them. They believed self-pity’s lie and decided that if they were going to survive, they needed to come up with a plan. “Our father is old,” one sister reasoned, “and there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then lie with him” (Genesis 19:31–32). Self-pity spawned sin, and both sisters gave birth to sons from their incestuous relationship. One named her child Moab, meaning “from father,” and it’s from him that the nation of Moab originated.
    I’m grateful for this pilgrimage, a wiser choice than staying home and wallowing in self-pity. While I don’t have to leave home to find God’s oasis, I do have to search for it, pursuingGod in prayer and trusting Him to take care of me when all other hope is gone. He promised that “If . . . you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29). Like David and his men, I have to turn my back on the lifeless Dead Sea and start climbing.
    Now that we’ve arrived in this cool glade, our guide has us sit down in the shade of an overhanging rock. He explains that this was once a cave that collapsed during an earthquake or a flash flood. It might even be the cave where David and his men hid from King Saul. Saul’s pursuit of David also began with a bout of self-pity after he heard the maidens of Israel hailing his victorious army with their song: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7). Self-pity gave birth to murderous jealousy, and Saul decided that David was his enemy and had to die.
    As I sit in this remnant of a cave, I wonder why David hid instead of fighting back. He was a seasoned warrior; the men with him were desperate enough to fight when cornered. Saul’s forces outnumbered theirs by seven to one, but unlikely odds hadn’t stopped David in the past. As a boy, he had challenged a giant more than twice his size while other warriors cowered in fear.