But, I Don't Like The Wilderness

The Scriptures remind us that after the baptism of our Lord, the Spirit led him into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil.

In some ways, this sounds very contradictory. God’s Holy Spirit had just descended from heaven upon our Lord, along with the words, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Such a high and holy moment it was.

But is it not true within our own lives, that great moments of exaltation are inevitably followed by times of depression. A minister sometimes calls it, his “blue Monday.” He had a great day on Sunday. Everything went fine. It was a busy day, an eventful day, and then Mon. comes, and he gets those let-down blues. Do you sometimes have that too?

And there in the wilderness, Jesus had it. The devil said, “Who do you think you are? You don’t really believe that you heard that voice at your baptism, do you? If you are the Son of God, then change this stone to bread...throw yourself down from the temple and let the angels save you.”

And so, the devil hits you and me right between the eyes with doubt. “You mean to stand there with your face hanging out, and tell me you are a child of...what God?...show me...prove it. You are an ape. You are a sick fly. You are a blob of protoplasm. You say your life has meaning? It is futility! People are scum, who someday will be blotted up from the earth.”

Jesus needed the wilderness as a time to orient his life, and so do I. But how cleverly the devil takes our moments of inspiration, our high and holy resolves, and turns them into dry dust.

It’s lonely in the wilderness. It’s a lonely thing to be brave, to be true, to be pure. I don’t like to be forced to make choices. I don’t like to be needled into thinking seriously about life. And here is the rising cry of multitudes of careless Christians. “Just let me sit in a pew by the side of the aisle, and let the rest of the Church go by. Don’t ask me to grow. Don’t ask me to think too much, because thinking is disturbing. Don’t get me out in the open where the devil can take his shots at me. Just let me stay safe back around the edge of life.”

I don’t like the wilderness, Lord. But somehow I have the feeling that those quiet times of worship, those lonely times of decision-making, those times of inner reflection, when I confront my sins, and my weaknesses, and my failures before God...that this is what the Spirit is leading me to do. And when I resist it, I may even be resisting God!