The wilderness is a place of desolation, exile, danger, and death. It’s not a place that we know. It’s not a place we’ve ever chosen to be, or if we’ve been there, we’ve tried to get out as fast as we possibly could. We’d rather do anything we can to avoid this unpredictable and painful place. Just as the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and just as Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for forty days, so too can we feel like we are wandering in the wilderness as we face and confront fears, doubts, vulnerabilities, temptations, and grief.

This Lent, we will journey over 40 days with Jesus and the people of God in the wilderness and discover what it means to wander these parts of life honestly with God. Lent’s slowness invites us to identify the distractions in our lives – the things we reach for when we are too tired, too sad, or too afraid to enter the wilderness of the present moment, OR too tired or sad or afraid to even remember that we do not go alone into that wilderness. We go with the Spirit who abides with us.

We will learn how crying out to God in our need can help us fully embrace what it means to be human beings held and loved by a God we can trust. We will learn that even through the darkest valleys, Jesus goes ahead of us and walks with us.