This broken, fallen world is functionally a wilderness. From their Garden of plenty the Lord God exiled Adam and Eve into a world of thorns and thistles where the ground was cursed and where they would need to sweat to find sufficient food to survive (Genesis 3:17–19). In the wilderness of this barren world, life can only flourish by the grace of God.
14 But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.