Isaiah 35

What one word describes and defines a desert to you? Dryness. Emptiness. Uninhabited. Sweltering. For me the word is; barrenness. As God revealed a sneak peak of the future to Isaiah he described it in terms of environments. Surely Isaiah was familiar with the wilderness of southern Judah. No one dwelt there. It was not a desert like the Sahara but it was not fruitful like the Jordan valley. God told Isaiah that the he was planning to change the barrenness of the world into fruitfulness (vs 2).  Some of the prophet's audience may have been thinking in farming terms, but I think God's message was targeting the people around the world. Most of them live in spiritual barrenness. God's grace can convert them into fields of bounty for his Kingdom.
Stuart