Approaching the Wilderness

As I approach Lent each year, I begin to feel a little bit nervous. Lent is a busy time in the church, but that isn’t why I get nervous. Easter is coming up, but that doesn’t make me nervous either. What makes me nervous approaching Lent is that which awaits me in the Wilderness. I try to imagine how Jesus felt as he went into the wilderness for 40 days. Was he nervous about what would happen there? Did he get apprehensive about the temptations that would await him?

            In Luke 7 Jesus scolds the critics of John the Baptist because they often said he was possessed by demons. Demons were rumored to live in the wilderness where John conducted his ministry so they assumed he was possessed. But, true to the rumor, Jesus found out there were demons in the wilderness. It is the demons, the struggles of my soul, the parts of my life I try to hide from the light, which make me nervous about Lent.

            As we walk through these 40 days of reflection and prayer, we must allow ourselves to look completely at our lives. For too much of the time we give ourselves permission, often unbeknownst, to compartmentalize and hide away the ugly parts of our lives. That is why Lent exists. That is why even Jesus went to the wilderness. To get to Easter and the joy of new life, we must first walk the 40 days of Lent and find out who we are. Without this time of preparation we will get to Easter and we may miss out on the transformation of a new life.

            So may you walk boldly, if cautiously, through the 40 days of Lent and allow God into all the cracks and nooks and closed doors of your life. Let his cleansing light shine into the darkness of your old self and make that which is broken and ugly into a beautiful reminder of his love for us all. And may you overcome the desire to hide and hold back and to avoid the wilderness all together. May you refuse to jump to Easter without first walking through the wilderness. And may you be rewarded with the joy that can only come from having faced the demons of our own sinfulness and seeing the hand of God at work shaping you into the image of Christ our Lord. Amen.