Tag: Wilderness

Braving My Lenten Wilderness

If your church follows the lectionary, you would have heard Mark’s rendering of Jesus’ baptism, how the Spirit descended like a dove, the Father spoke affirming words, and how the Spirit immediately drove Jesus into the wilderness (Mark 1:9-15).  Mark is the most economic in his description of Jesus’ wilderness temptation, but we know from reading his account: (1) Jesus was there 40 days, (2) he was tempted by Satan, (3) he was with the wild animals, and (4) he was waited on by angels. At the end of his desert days, John, his cousin, was arrested and Jesus went to Galilee preaching, “It’s time! God’s reign has come close! Change your heart and trust the good news!”

The forty days of Lent—Ash Wednesday to Easter minus Sundays in the western Church calendar—correspond to the 40 days of Jesus’ wilderness temptation. To practice Lent is to self-consciously follow Jesus into the wilderness. There we will be tempted, we will grow hungry, we will see ways we are in danger. But like Jesus, who was ministered to by the angels. We will sense ourselves as being held in God’s care, and have God’s presence mediated to us.

Going to the wilderness is the hardest part of practicing Lent for me because I feel like I’ve already spent too much time there. Jesus took forty days and clarified his call before going about the countryside preaching, teaching, casting out the Powers and healing the sick. But wilderness haunts my story and still feel perpetually, vocationally frustrated. I graduated from seminary in 2010 with a mountain of student debt. Unable to find a way into pastoral ministry and needing a job, I worked at a hardware store in Blaine, Washington. I call that season of my life, ‘Waylaid in Blaine,’ and while there were gifts and blessings and the angels of God ministered to me and my family, it was a desert place for me.  I was eager to move into the land of promise.

A few years later I got the opportunity. I uprooted. My family and I moved across country where I took up the role of lead pastor of a small congregation. I was 40. Our fourth kid was born there. We named our son Benedict Asher (meaning blessing and happiness) because I mused. “After 40 years in the wilderness, we are now in the promised land, doing the things God has called us to do.”

My son is indeed a blessing, but a year after coming to Florida, the church and I parted ways. They were a small congregation with big bills feeling the weight of scarcity and they needed a leader who would turn things around for them. I didn’t deliver on their hopes (e.g. grow the church, bring in money, invigorate them with spiritual vitality). But it wasn’t just them. I failed to deliver on the things I feel called to.  I mishandled important relationships and I failed in my attempts to get the church to partner with the wider community. I think it was an impossible situation and I was a bad fit for them, but I still feel the ways and places I didn’t measure up, and I grieve the broken relationships.

But for the next eight months, I lived in that community, seven blocks from my old church. I dreaded running into former congregants because when I saw them, I felt like a failure. Some members reached out and were kind, but most severed all contact. My kids would cry because we couldn’t go to that church anymore. Me too. And while I had worked at building community connections and relationships, I suddenly felt like any investment I had in the neighborhood would be perceived as competing with my former church. Every interaction became difficult for me (I’m normally gregariously extroverted). And it hurt. A lot. I don’t think I ever felt so isolated.  We were in the wilderness again, unsure of next steps and feeling isolated.

So we uprooted again, heading back to the Northwest and ended up in the city of  Medford, Oregon. We ended up in a new city but carrying the self-doubt, disillusionment, and disconnection. We started attending a local Methodist church and slowly building a life here. We subsist, ministered to by the angels, but in lots of ways I’m still in a wilderness place. I have had opportunities to preach and have healed somewhat, but I feel gripped with fear and haven’t done much to pursue the things I feel like I’m called to.

So entering the Lenten Wilderness is just a decision, for me, to recognize my own spiritual locale. Here I am. Where are you? Is your life the land of promise? Or are there ways you feel, as I do, vocationally and relationally frustrated? Perhaps you carry wounds that keep you from giving and receiving love in a community? The Spirit drove Jesus to the wilderness, but as we listen to the Spirit’s whisper, perhaps we recognize the ways we are already there.

This past weekend I drove up to Portland for a conference. On the way up, I listened to the Audiobook version of Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness (. She describes her own longing for connection and true belonging and what it means to “brave the wilderness.” She offers up the acronym BRAVING to those of us who find ourselves in the wilderness (Lenten or otherwise):

  • Boundaries – being clear about our own boundaries and the boundaries of others
  • Reliability – the decision to trust others to do what they say they are going to do, and doing the same.
  • Accountability – trusting others who apologize and make amends for their mistakes, and doing the same ourselves.
  • Vault- holding in confidence what is shared with you and not sharing stories that are not ours to tell.
  • Integrity – choosing courage over comfort and practicing what we say we believe.
  • Nonjudgement – Nonjudgment of others in relationship, non-judgment for ourselves. We can fall apart, we can ask for help. We can be needy.
  • Generosity – Choosing to be generous in our assumptions about what people do to us and why.

So here I am, in the wilderness, longing for connection. Wanting to step with courage into calling, but still feeling wounded and afraid. I want so badly to be on the other side of the desert, speaking Good news of God’s closeness and welcome. But here I am. And I must brave this place and learn to find my voice again.

 

An Exodus to Freedom: a book review

As I write this, we are at the beginning of Passover, a celebration of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and the beginning of their long sojourn to the Promised Land. Israel’s Exodus wasn’t just its liberation of Egypt, but it encompassed the forty-year wilderness journey with forty-two different campsites and G-d’s covenant with Israel at Sinai.  Both Christians and Jews read the Torah, and the Exodus story,  as Scripture, looking for what deeper meaning it has for life. Christians describe Jesus as our Passover lamb and appropriate Jewish traditions of liberation and salvation. Unfortunately, we haven’t often paused to listen to how Jewish interpreters understand our shared scriptural tradition.

reimagining-exodus  Rabbi David Zaslow is no stranger to the interfaith discussion. His award-winning book, Jesus First Century Rabbi, explored the Christian gospel from a Jewish perspective (I review that book here). As the synagogue leader of Havurah Shir Hadash in Ashland, Oregon (not too far away from my home in Medford), workshop leader and media pundit, he has deepened the dialogue between Jews and Christians.

His newest book, Reimaging the Exodus: A Story of Freedom builds a bridge between Judaism and Christianity while respecting the unique features of both religious traditions.  Zaslow happily notes the common themes of Passover and the cross, Exodus and Easter. Yet, he also notes ways in which Christians have bowdlerized the Jewish tradition with a replacement theology that demeans the sacred history of the Hebrew Bible.

Zaslow’s book divides into five parts (so did his last book. Self-conscious patterning after the Torah?). Each section is distinct in style and purpose. In part one, Zaslow describes the significance of the Exodus for the Jewish tradition—G-d’s liberation of Israel and their forty-year, two-hundred-mile journey, learning to walk in freedom. Part two offers a Midrashic interpretation of twenty passages from the Torah (mostly drawn from Exodus, but also Numbers and Deuteronomy). Zaslow’s commentary on the passages is scholarly and rich, but suggestive and evocative. Part three explores the common themes and key differences between a Jewish understanding of Exodus and the Christian Easter. Part four discusses in more detail the ways Christians (and Jews) have historically appropriated and misappropriated the tradition to justify various agendas (i.e. Puritans settling the New World, American Colonialism, the American Revolution against British Tyranny, Civil War Southern’s against the North,  Mormons, Civil Rights advocates, etc). Part five has personal stories (and a poem) of where Zaslow has seen Exodus reimagined in interfaith contexts (including an interfaith Good Friday service with a Portland synagogue, and stories from a model seder Zaslow leads in a Catholic parish).

Zaslow has an irenic nature and looks for ways that Christians and Jews can connect with each other and find common spiritual ground. He is respectful of what is distinctive in Christian theology and practice, but he is not afraid to offer a sharp critique of Christian supersessionism and replacement theology. Too many Christians have treated the Old Testament and Jewish Tradition as a mere prequel and failed to listen to the insights of Judaism. In Zaslow’s early book (Jesus First Century Rabbi) he engaged the Christian gospel traditions. This book invites Christians to a similar engagement with Judaism. Beyond just mining the text for Christological insights, the Exodus has a lot to teach us about what it means to be human and to be spiritual. Rabbi Zaslow’s evocative Midrash reveals as much.

I give this book five stars and recommend it for Christians, Jews and those who are spiritual but don’t sit easily in either world.  Zaslow invites us to a journey toward freedom, ” Just as the Exodus began with a catastrophe of enslavement but led to a great redemption, so we pray to God that the catastrophes of our own era are merely preludes to an even greater redemption and the liberation of all humanity as well as the planet” (33). ★★★★★

Notice of material connection: I recieved a copy of this book from Paraclete Press in exchange for my honest review.

G is for Grace (an alphabet for penitents)

Thus says the Lord:
The people who survived the sword
    found grace in the wilderness;
when Israel sought for rest,
the Lord appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
    therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. (Jeremiah 31:2-3).

Grace is the ground we stand on, the word connotes “mercy” and “favor.” We are told we are ‘saved by grace’—God’s unmerited favor toward us, because of Christ and his cross. In the thought-world of Jeremiah the prophet(quoted above), grace meant that exile and destruction weren’t the final words. Because of God’s favor, faithfulness and everlasting love, there was Grace, for Israel, in the wilderness. The forty-day period of Lent gets its forty days from Jesus wilderness fast (Matthew 4:1-11). As we enter into wilderness space—through fasting and repentance—we do so with confidence, that we, too, will find grace in the wilderness.

No repentance is possible without the reality of grace. Theologians talk of Prevenient Grace—the Grace of God which precedes human repentance. Calvinists and everyone else argue about how irresistible this grace is.  I don’t know. But I do know without the existential hope of restoration and mercy, there is not much psychological need to ‘repent.’ A fast only makes sense in light of a rock-solid belief in God’s grace for us.

But God’s grace isn’t the only grace we need. We also need our own. As we strip away our comforts and take an honest stock of our heart condition, we may recoil at what we find there. We are the ones whose hands crafted idols. We justify sin and act selfishly. We have hurt other people and mistreated them. When we start to see this, we beat ourselves up and feel unworthy. Normally we dull our guilty feelings with the things that comfort us(ice cream, cookies, chocolate, etc). But the wilderness of Lent forces us to confront our demons in the den of self-loathing.

Grace in the wilderness comes as we trust in the grace of God towards sinners and learn to be gracious with ourselves. We struggle and stumble along the way. Grace isn’t a belief in our worthiness so much as a belief that God thought we were worth it. We are more than our missteps. At our core, we are God’s beloved—the objects of God’s grace and His delight. He gives rest to us when we’re weary. He searches for us when we’re far away. He loves us with forever faithfulness. We are loved. Judgment and destruction do not have the final word. Grace in the wilderness!

 god27s_grace

Good News Lent: Wilderness Temptation, Part I

I am committed to hearing Good News this Lent. In a previous post I explored some of the ‘good news’ for Jesus and us in the wilderness Jesus was where the Holy Spirit wanted Him to be, it clarified and solidified His identity and mission, it was a place of preparation and purgation, and the place where Jesus back stories the gospel.

judean_wilderness1All this is true, but the best news about the wilderness is this: it doesn’t go on forever. Wildernesses are meant to be a stop on the way to somewhere else, . Israel’s forty-year wilderness wandering ended when they crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land; Jesus forty days preceded three years of active ministry, later a cross and a grave gave way to resurrection and glory. A dry, desolate place may be large, it may stretch on for miles in all directions, you may have been here for years, and you may have no sense when this season will end. But dry, desolate places do not encompass all reality. This is a part of the journey, it is no destination.

Mark and Luke’s gospels tells us that Jesus was ‘in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan’ (Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-2). Matthew places Satan’s temptation at the end of the wilderness time, “After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.The tempter came to him. . .” (Matthew 4:2-3).  It is true that Jesus was in a vulnerable state after his forty-day-fast, but I think the significance of Matthew’s timeline because Jesus’ responses reveal the trajectory, tone and rules of engagement for His earthly ministry. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy (a wilderness textbook) three times On his lips, these words drip with good news and expose the devil’s dead-ends. ( Matthew 4:1-11). Let’s look at the first temptation:

“It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

The accuser says to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” The immediate context tells of Jesus’ hunger after forty days fasting.  Certainly this is part of it, but Henri Nouwen in In the Name of Jesus identifies this first temptation as a temptation toward relevance. How many hungry people could be fed if the stones would become bread? Nowen writes:

Aren’t we not called to do something that makes people realize that we do make a difference in their lives? Aren’t we called to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and alleviate the suffering of the poor? Jesus was faced with these same questions, but when he was asked to prove his power as the Son of God by the relevant behavior of changing stones to bread he clung to his mission to proclaim the word and said, “Human beings live not by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (18).

Rome was the oppressor. They had a wide expanse of land and resources at their disposal and ruled over diverse people groups, including Jesus’own people, the Jews. Throughout the empire they quashed rebellion through ‘bread and circuses’—people were feed just enough and distracted enough, so they didn’t organize for real change. Jesus came to seek and save the lost, to embody Israel’s hopes and to restore the world  to a right relationship with him. Bread from stones is a mere pittance, a cheap parlor trick, even if it fills an immediate need. God had a plan and an end he was moving toward—a new heaven and a new earth: humanity restored and Creation made perfect. If he set that aside for bread, he would have been choosing the quick fix over God the Father’s comprehensive vision for human flourishing. We choose the Word of God over bread because the wilderness doesn’t go on forever, and we have a hope to sustain us. Courage and commitment comes as we keep the end game in mind.

 

I am not trying to be trite. I know what the wilderness is like, both in life and in ministry. I know the constrictive stress of financial obligations—mounting bills which make you feel like you can’t do anything, the stress of not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from, and the fear that when it comes it won’t be enough. I know what it is to lose something you care about and to hunger for something which lies just beyond your grasp. These are the moments I long for the stones to become bread so that I can move easily = to the next big thing. Somebody buy me a lottery ticket. Stones to bread, rags to riches, anything to help me traverse this wasteland back to where I’m supposed to be. 

 

Jesus does what Esau could not (the guy who sold his birthright for a  stomachful of stew).  When Satan gives Jesus away to satisfy his physical hungry, Jesus clung tenaciously to God’s plan—every word that fell from God’s mouth. He would not be seduced by technique, quick-fixes and short term gains. God’s Word doesn’t return void but accomplishes God’s desires and purposes (Isaiah 55:11). Jesus would not put his hope in material provision, or relevance, or magic. He trusted that what God said, God would do and He held with all his being to the promises of God.

Where is your hope? Who are you trusting in for your salvation? If we are to learn from Jesus how to not settle for bread of our own making, we need a hope and a vision big enough to sustain us through our vulnerability and weakness. Or we may sell out for a meal. Jesus knew the story and where it was headed. If we are to live by God’s Word we need to know the story. If you haven’t read the Bible cover-to-cover, you should. God’s Word orients us when we are in dangerous terrain.

But living by God’s Word instead of bread, also means prayer. Nouwen puts it like this,  “To live a life that is not dominated by the desire to be relevant but is instead safely anchored in the knowledge of God’s first love, we have to be mystics. A mystic is a person whose identity is deeply rooted in God’s first love” (28). The mystic doesn’t chase bread because she knows herself to be cherished and cared for by the God of love. We will be sustained through the wilderness when we know whose we are.

Jesus would say on a different occasion that his food was to do the will of He who sent him (John 4:34). But it wasn’t as though He quit eating. The gospels are glutted with stories of Jesus lounging around a table, breaking bread with Pharisees, eating and drinking with tax collectors, sinners, lepers, and dirty-handed disciples. He would instruct his disciples to pray for daily bread. His best known miracle was, if not making bread from stones, multiplying it to feed thousands. His own life was broken as bread and given for the world. But this as ever bread for Himself. It was for the world and He remained rooted in God’s love, trusting Him wholeheartedly.

Wilderness God, You stood with lean frame and your belly distended, staring down Satan. Thank you for not quitting, but staying committed to Your  redemptive plan. Thank you for trusting the Father more than food. Help me to live with the same trust, and security that you had in the Judean Wilderness. Give me confidence that the desert doesn’t extend forever, and that at the end of it, You have good things. Help me to feed on Your Word, that I may live always in the love of God.  Amen

 

Good News Lent: Wilderness Introduction

At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him. Mark 1:12-13

Are you in a wilderness? It could be one of your own making—sin and shame isolating you from others. It could be a wilderness hoist on you through circumstance: the death of a loved one, a broken relationship, a debilitating illness, the loss of a job. Maybe you went to what you thought was the land of promise, and found yourself in a  barren wasteland. However, you got here, you are not alone. Jesus also walked in the wilderness. For forty days he was tempted by the devil.

Jesus’ temptation by Satan in the wilderness is a poignant image for Lent. It is this episode from Jesus’ life that the church got the ‘forty days’ that determine the length of the season. Forty days Jesus fasted, so we fast forty days (minus Sundays). There Jesus was victor over temptation, so we take this time to pursue holiness, attentive to our proclivity toward sin. Yes, Jesus’ wilderness experience is foundational for our experience of Lent. But does the wilderness hold good news for us? Jesus faced the devil in the dry arid air of the desert. He did so, for the joy set before him. I see five reasons the wilderness was good news for Jesus, and is good news for us!

The Wilderness is Where God Wanted Jesus to Be

judean_wildernessWe are told in Mark’s gospel that the Spirit “sent” Jesus into the wilderness.   Jesus emerged from the Jordan, dripping wet from his baptism and the Spirit sent him to the desert. The NIV’s ‘sent’ is a rather tepid translation of the Greek ἐκβάλλει. The word carries the force of ‘drove out’ or ‘expelled.’ Jesus was forced out to the wilderness, there by the Spirit’s compulsion. He was in the wilderness because God wanted Him there.  Why did the Spirit want Jesus there? Matthew gives the reason, “He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by devil” (Matt. 4:1).

There was contest that needed to happen between Jesus and Satan at the outset of his ministry. The ultimate contest would come later, but this wilderness time was important. Jesus had heard his Father’s voice, saw the heavens open and felt the Spirit’s presence resting like a cooing dove on Him. He couldn’t go back to carpentry; his Kingdom mission was inaugurated. God sent him to the wilderness, but he didn’t expect him to stay there.  He went to quote Deuteronomy at the Devil and strengthen his resolve to face what lay ahead

Spiritually the wilderness is a liminal space, it is a place between places. Jesus was stepping out of the life as an obscure Galilean carpenter, to a lifestyle which included itinerant evangelism, divine healing and political rabble-rousing. This was a big change in Jesus’ life, even for the Son of God. The desert gave Jesus the space a place to transition.

Where does God have you? If you are in a wilderness right now, perhaps the Spirit has driven you there because He is transitioning you to something new, something significant. This is a time to pay attention and ask God what He is doing?

 

The Wilderness Clarifies Identity and Allowed Jesus Space to Connect to God

 

God took Jesus to the wilderness after affirming him in baptism. Jonathan Martin writes:

[T]he reason that God sent Jesus into the wilderness was not to weaken Him­—so that his showdown with Satan would become “the ultimate test”—but rather to strengthen Him and cement in His heart the truth of His identity. Fresh from hearing the words of confirmation on which His entire life and ministry would be built, there was no safer place than the wilderness for Jesus to go next. Even though His experience in the wilderness wasn’t easy—He fasted for forty days and forty nights and was confronted by the devil—the devil wasn’t the only one he encountered there. The Spirit sent Jesus into the wilderness, rejuvenated with the affirmation of His identity in God’s eyes, and allowed Him to step away from His day-to-day life until the noise ad hurry of the world around Him was stripped down to the point where He could easily distinguish the voice of the accuser from the voice of the Father. The same can be true for us. [1]

Belden Lane says, “Desert and mountain places, located on the margins of society are locations of choice in luring God’s people to a deeper understanding of who they are. Yahweh frequently moves to the boundary in order to restore the center, calling a broken people back to justice and compassion.”[2] As with Jesus, so with us. We move (or are moved) into wilderness spaces to discover who we really are. It wasn’t enough that Jesus heard the Father affirm Him in baptism. He needed space to clarify what those words meant—to be moved by the Spirit, to connect with Father. He needed time out of the limelight to clarify His identity, and to hear God’s voice.

You are a child of God! The Father declares His love for you, the Spirit of God rests on all who are His. We need this space to understand what it means that we are His. We need to ‘unplug’ and take time in obscurity to cement this and to learn to discern the voice of God for us.

The Wilderness is a Place of Preparation

When Jesus left the wilderness, his public ministry would begin. It would culminate on a Roman cross. Along the way he would cast out demons, heal the sick, announce good news, and challenge the religious and political structures.  He would gather a handful of followers that he would pour his life into, so that they would lead the movement in his absence. There was a lot of work to be done and it would take all of him.  Jesus spent forty days fasting and praying at the outset of his ministry.  This time in the wilderness was preparation for what lay ahead.  These wilderness spaces are our preparatory school as well.  As the desert clarifies our identity—we see ourselves in all our vulnerability, weakness, brokenness and wonder—we sense God’s call to step out in compassion for the world. The obscurity of the margins is where God prepares us for the work ahead.

Do you know what God is Calling You to? Do you have a sense of the type of work he would like to do through you? How are you being prepared for that task? Our wilderness is where we discern God’s call and gain the courage to step into it.

 

The Wilderness is a Place of Purgation

The wilderness is where Jesus is tempted by the devil (Jesus’ temptation is the subject of my next post).  This is also the space where we face those ugly bits in ourselves. The Christian tradition calls this purgation—a purification of the soul from sin. Jesus was the sinless Son of God, but even he faced temptation. The wilderness is the space where we can wrestle our demons all the way down.  We all have comforts and strategies we employ that we use which prevent us from examining our heart’s condition: we use the demands of work and commitments to crowd out self-reflection; we fill our down time with Netflix binge watches of our favorite series; we fill our bellies with a tub of cookie dough ice cream or engage in some retail therapy. We are good at distracting ourselves with work, food, and entertainment. Perhaps we self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. When all these are stripped away through fasting or circumstance, we begin to see ourselves for who we are and to deal with the parts of our soul we work so hard at avoiding.   Lane writes:

The way of purgation involves an entry into what is unnerving, even grotesque in our lives, into what quickly reveals our limits. It seems at first, like most beginnings in the spiritual life, a mistake, a false start, an imperfection in God’s planning, a regression in our own growth. Only in hindsight do we recognize it for the unexpected gift that it is.[3]

The good news of the desert is that as our defenses are stripped away and our sin is laid bare before God, He transforms us. When we emerge from this marginal, liminal space, we are made new. The wilderness is a hard place to be, but it is where God has his way in us.

The Wilderness is Where Jesus ‘Back-stories’ the Good News.

The good news about Jesus is made coherent as part of the larger story of God and Israel’s story.  N.T. Wright’s project has been to show how Jesus fulfills Israel’s messianic hopes.  Jesus does this in two ways: he recapitulates Israel and its sacred symbols around himself and he does the sort of things the Hebrew Scriptures attest that only God can do.  The Hebrew Scriptures, what Christian’s call the Old Testament, provides the backstory essential for understanding who Jesus is and why he came. When we look again at Jesus wilderness wandering, we see God reenacting Israel’s own wandering. The people of Israel went through the Red Sea and spent forty years in the wilderness; Jesus left the Jordan for forty days in the wilderness. Israel was led by God’s presence in a pillar of fire by day and a cloud by night (Exodus 13:21); Jesus was compelled forward by the Spirit. Israel was tested for forty years (Deuteronomy 8:2); Jesus was tempted by the devil. But while Israel grumbled, complained, and failed their wilderness tests, Jesus would emerge victorious.  Jesus’ reenactment showed him to be the New Israel, fulfilling covenant with God, walking faithfully with him.

Something new was happening in the Judean countryside. A Messiah was coming that would fulfill all of Israel’s hopes and longing. A man would stumble out of the desert that would embody everything Israel was supposed to be.

Jesus came. He suffered the wilderness, he overcame the time of testing and he would lead his people to the good land. Praise God that Jesus came to be what we could not be for ourselves. Thank you Jesus for going before us, marking the way through the wilderness and showing us the way forward as we trust in him.

 

Whatever your wilderness is, press into it. Jesus walked this road and there are good things in store.  God will take this time to show you who you are, to help you see clearly who He is, to guide you, to show you the way forward, to prepare you, to cleanse your heart of Sin.  The desert is harsh landscape, and these are difficult days. There are gifts here too.

[Note: I previous edition of this page, titled it “Wilderness Part I.” However I decided to break Jesus’ Temptations into several posts, and treat this an introductory post].

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Jonathan Martin, Prototype: What Happens When You Discover You Are More Like Jesus Than You Think. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2013), 51.

[2] Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscape: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 46.

[3] Lane, 27.