Lent and Three Journeys Through the Wilderness

Every year as a kid, there would be a few days in March when many of my classmates would start a new conversation:  what they were giving up for Lent. As an informally-traditional Methodist, it was a conversation that I couldn’t really participate in. About a week into Lent, though, very few people seemed to be talking about it anymore. Usually, it was because their attempts to give up watching TV or eating chocolate had proven unsuccessful. I don’t doubt the good intentions of my classmates; breaking engrained habits can be hard. They were human, after all, and being children of God doesn’t exempt us from struggling to do the right thing. The 40-year journey of the ancient Israelites is a case in point.

A desert in Egypt (which incidentally served as the locale
for my first sandboarding experience)

In spite of having seen the love and power of God through their crossing of the Red Sea, in the bestowing of manna and quails and water, they could have won the Olympic gold medal for grumbling against the Lord. They were guided in their journey by the presence of God Himself, in the pillar of smoke by day and of fire by night. But in their spiritual lives, they were utterly lost. They refused to accept the spiritual gifts God had to offer, instead choosing to rebel against Him and His servant Moses. They tempted the Lord and served other gods. None of that generation except Joshua and Caleb entered the promised land. In spite of being a people hand-picked by God for Himself, they had fallen on their faces. They were human, after all.

More than a thousand years later, another man wandered the Wilderness, but in Judea instead of Egypt. Like the Israelities, he had recently been declared as the Son of God. As the Israelites had learned, this vocation came with great responsibility, responsibility to listen to and obey the Lord. But where the Israelites had failed, the Jewish Messiah would pass with flying colors. Satan tried his best to tempt Jesus at the end of his 40-day fast, urging him to use his divinity to create bread out of thin air, have angels save him from death, and gain control over all the nations of the earth. Jesus’ response to each temptation showed his unflagging obedience to God and made the contrast between his Wilderness journey and that of the Israelites that much clearer. Because of Jesus’ victory over Satan in the Wilderness, he was able to go on to conduct his ministry, die for our sins, and be resurrected. Because of his obedience to the Father, we were able to become God’s adopted Children.

As Christians, our relationship with God carries with it its own responsibilities. We’re all in the midst of our own Wilderness journeys, having fled from the powers of sin and death and become God’s children through baptism. For now, we’re liable to make mistakes and sin, to hurt those we love and get things wrong again and again. During this journey, though, we’re led not by a pillar of smoke and fire, but by a man and the Spirit that his Father sent to comfort and guide us. For now, we have to trust with all our hearts that Jesus and the Holy Spirit will be able to get us to our own Promised Land, where God will truly be our god, and we will truly be His people.