Lent Provides Us With Our Own Trip 'into The Desert'
My brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
The Gospels tell us that Jesus, upon being baptized, was led by the Spirit into the desert. It was here, we are told, that he was tempted by the devil.
This season of Lent is very often compared with a desert experience. It is in this season of Lent that we are reminded of our mortality. The ashes placed upon our foreheads remind us that we are, when all is stripped away, subject to the laws of nature.
In the desert, the nights are bitterly cold and the day’s heat can scorch. There is little refuge or water to sustain life. Wild animals scavenge for food, prowling about in the crags and crevices. It is here that the priorities of one’s life take a dramatic shift. No longer do we worry about the car, house, boat, vacation, party, job and other facets of our lives that consume much of our time. Suddenly, our primary, laser-like focus becomes basic survival.
The season of Lent is the spiritual equivalent of this experience. It is on this journey that we strip all of the clutter from our lives and focus on our most basic spiritual survival. It is in this desert, as we shiver from the cold of it or burn from the heat of it, that we meet our temptations, those things that we have (many times without our even knowing) placed above God, and cast them down before us. We break the chains with which we have gradually bound ourselves, and we finally clothe ourselves with the peace and fulfillment that can only be Jesus Christ.
In this desert, with its beautiful barrenness, we can find our pain and hand it to the Lord. It is here that we can recognize our misguided actions and missteps in life, and vow to rectify these before our God.
And when it seems that we are broken and bruised for our offenses, as we kneel in the dust of this arid place, we will look up to see a man casually drawing in the sand with his finger. Through our tears we will see him look up at us and grin that slight grin he has, the one where he smiles more with his eyes than with his mouth, and we will know that he remains bound to us as we are to him.
Just as the desert is also wild and beautiful in its landscape, so too are our souls. There, deep inside of us, we find the pool of grace; the breeze of the Spirit; the cold darkness of temptation and sin; the breathtaking dawn of redemption; the anxiety of dusk; and in all of these our brother, Jesus Christ, has taken up his staff and walks with us. He knows the paths we must take and the pits we must avoid. He remembers the landscape of this place … for he has been here before.
If the Son of Man allowed himself to be led into the desert, then who are we if we do not follow? If Jesus Christ bent the knee of his will to the Spirit, then shall we not bow our stiff necks and follow? To whom shall we turn? Where shall we go if we do not have Jesus Christ and the promise of his Easter Rising set before us on this path?
My dearest brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, allow yourselves to be led by the Spirit into the deserts of your souls. In this testing experience of shedding your burdens in this desert, you will open yourselves much more fully to the glorious indwelling of God’s redemptive love on Easter Sunday. Therefore, be joyful my friends; for we continue on this path into the wild of our inner-selves, that we might return upon this same path at the end of our 40 days, transformed and transfigured by the light of the Holy Spirit.
