As individual Christians and as a church we are invited into Lent to engage in prayer and reflection on the meaning, purpose, and promise of our lives as children of God. Like Jesus, the church is asked to stand in the wilderness, with temptation and wild beasts on one side and attending angels on the other, and to recognize and rely on the voice of God and of the Spirit to lead us through to renewed relationship with God and one another. The Lenten season gives us the chance to move beyond the conventions and pretenses to which we cling and behind which we often hide in our lives with God, and to experience in their place, the intensity of a walk with God in the wilderness. Lent is a journey. You cannot leap from baptism to resurrection without going through the wilderness just as the people of Israel could not get to the promised land without passing through the same. Let’s not avoid Lent because of its challenges but rather embrace it as the path to deeper faith and more abundant life.
