In the desert with Jesus.

“And immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness.  And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts: and the angels ministered to Him.”
Mk. 1 v. 12 & 13

The Judean wilderness is hostile and unforgiving.  It is immense, and it emphasises the ‘littleness’ of mankind as no other.  The psalmist asks in Ps.8 v. 4  “What is man that You are mindful of him”….. a cry indeed from out of the vastness of the desert wilderness.  And it was into this vast emptiness that “the Spirit drove” Jesus to face the challenges of how He would do His work on earth, Jesus had to choose….either the way of unconditional, self-denying love which would lead to the humiliation and horror of the cross, but which would be the way of obedience to His Father: or the way of earthly might and power, the way of the conqueror, the way of Satan. 

In the loneliness of the wilderness this was the challenge Jesus faced but in His loneliness…He did not face it alone.  The wild beasts were with Him.  William Barclay, in this commentary on Mark’s Gospel, translates this as “the wild beasts were His companions”, and suggests that they were not part of nay terror Jesus might have felt in the wilderness, but rather that they were His friends, that this encounter foreshadowed Isaiah’s prophecy that when the Messiah came enmity between man and beast would cease;
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb….The calf and the young lion and the fatling together: And a little child shall lead them.”   Isaiah 11 v. 6
Maybe, suggests Barclay, the wild beasts recognized Jesus as their friend and King before mankind did.
And the angels ministered to Him.  Jesus was not alone in His wilderness time.  God’s protective love surrounded Him.  Jesus came out of the wilderness stronger, having chosen the way of obedience to His father, whatever the cost.

Jesus didn’t know Lent as we do, but in a sense His time in the desert wilderness of Judea was His “Lenten experience”.  Lent for us, is the time when we review our discipleship, our walk with God, and our relationship with Him.  It’s when we take stock of how we’ve done since we held our palm crosses so high a year ago, proclaiming our discipleship for all to see.  Its when we take stock of our successes and failures, of how we need to do things in the future and of how this will affect our relationship with God.

And Lent, for us, can be a time when, as it were, we cross the desert with Jesus, and with Him we re-connect with God; when we consider, with Him, what it means to do the will of God.  And it can be that time when we reflect on our choice to follow Jesus, and when we renew that choice. 

And, having chosen to renew, we, like Jesus, come out of our Lenten experience stronger.

To reflect on;  The love which sustained Jesus in the desert, in His ministry and most supremely on the cross, is there for each of us through the weeks of Lent.  It will bring us into Christ’s resurrection and the joy of Eastertide.

Joan Grenfell