This week, our journey with the Good Shepherd brings us into the wilderness as we begin Lent, the 40-day period of preparation before celebrating the resurrection of Jesus at Easter.
Lent is modeled after the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness preparing to begin His public ministry, which itself echoes the 40 years the Israelites spent in the wilderness following their Exodus from Egypt. Like Lent, the Israelites’ time in the wilderness can be mistakenly seen as a punishment. In truth, wilderness time offers deep and necessary preparation. (In Scripture, the number “40” signifies a time of testing, preparation, purification, and renewal.)
When we hear “wilderness,” we tend to think about our Colorado context, but biblical wilderness meant harsh desert. Gone were the fertile fields of the Nile and even the punitive provisions of Pharaoh’s economy. In the wilderness, the Israelites were stripped of everything except God alone. After 400 years of slavery in Egypt, Israel had lost sight of God and forgotten who they were. They were unable to live as God’s people in the way they were meant to. It is no coincidence that it was in the wilderness that God invited the Israelites to return to the truth of who God is and who God had created them to be. The sheep needed to learn how to trust their shepherd.
The invitation God offered the Israelites in the wilderness is the same invitation God gives us each Lent. This season is a beautiful, sacred, transformative time. As Benedictine nun Sister Joan Chittister wrote:
“The purpose of Lent is to confront us with ourselves in a way that’s conscious and purposeful, that enables us to deal with the rest of life well. Lent isn’t a ‘penitential season.’ It’s a growing season. It requires us to determine what is worth dying for in our own lives and what may be necessary for us to become if we really want to live.”
Each Sunday of this season, we’ll explore key moments in the Israelites’ time in the wilderness. We’ll see how the wilderness reveals who God is and how God uses it to invite us into deeper freedom, fullness, and wholeness in our own lives. The wilderness is a mercy, not a punishment. During Lent, God gently and kindly invites us to turn away from that which brings death and re-turn to the God who brings life so that we can fully receive God’s gift of new life as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection on Easter.
Grateful to be on this journey together,
The PPC Teaching Team