Into The Wilderness: Day 1

Day 1: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Matthew 4:1 

The wilderness is a lonely place. It's not a place to necessarily get away to be WITH God. In fact, it might be a place to get away from God; or all my projections of God. It seems that was the case with Jesus. He was led by the Spirit to be tested, but after that it was just Jesus, the Devil, and the time of testing. There were no prayers in the wilderness. Just loneliness. I've always run away from loneliness. I'm a high I on the DISK personality test. This means you thrive on social interaction. Yet, for 4 years now, I find myself running to the quiet place, the lonely place. The only problem is, I'm still there. If I could find a place where I wasn’t that might help. I think I've come to enjoy loneliness because it's there that I discover my favorite fundamental idea about me and God. “God is your being. And, who you are, you are in God. But, you are NOT God's being (Martin Laird).” It may very well be that loneliness is my deepest fear because it's there where I come face to face with God's being. Yet, ironically, loneliness may also be my deepest longing because it's there where I come face to face with God's being. Could this be what Jesus meant by claiming life is found by losing it? So, the ashes today of Ash Wednesday remind me what it is to truly be me. And, that can not be merely the sum total of these years. My life has got to be more than what I experience here in this life. For, these years are few and full of much loneliness and despair. But, God fills my loneliness by entering it and taking the depth of it into himself. God took my loneliness not simply as a one time event in the cross of Jesus, but as a core identity of who he is. This is love. Jesus is his name. Could it be that all the experiences that appear to be the death of me (loneliness, loss, pain, brain cancer, failures, etc. etc.) are actually the life of me, because it is in those very places where God most fully dwells? 

“God, help me see that the journey of wilderness (in all its forms) is not an absence of you, but a fuller awareness of you who dwell on the cross of pain and in the loneliness of the tomb.”