"Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil." Lk 4:1
The temptations of Jesus in Luke's Gospel remind us that Jesus was led into the desert, he did not choose to go there. Because the desert was terribly cold at night and unbearably hot during the day, it was a place everyone avoided and although it became a place of affirmation for Jesus, we should not forget that it was dark and forbidding.
The challenge of the Gospel is clear. When we can allow God to be God and look for God in the dusty and suffocating corners of life, we are acknowledging that we are made in God's image. God is not made in ours. While we know that suffering is not something we seek in itself, we also know we cannot avoid suffering altogether. Every life is full of light and dark. Knowing that God is always with us, even when we cannot understand God's ways, is the key to our faith. The road to Easter joy must go through Calvary.
Today, return to an unhealed place within your heart and let God be with you.
Recount a time when you discovered God in the "desert."
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