From Pastor Kristen:
In Sunday’s gospel reading from Luke 4:1-13, the devil tries to convince Jesus to put aside his humanity (like his hunger, humility, and vulnerability) in order to prove his power of the Son of God. But instead, Jesus chooses to embrace all that it means to be human. What an extraordinary thing to know, that there is no struggle or suffering that God’s self has not also experienced. Jesus has been in the desert places, and promises to be with us in ours, and lead us through to a new life.
On Ash Wednesday, I was one of over three thousand Christians from eighty countries around the globe who took part in an ecumenical Ash Wednesday service which included messages from pastors and priests from Ukrainian towns and cities that are under attack by Russian military. We heard and saw how their country, their communities, and their neighborhoods have become dangerous, wilderness places.
But war isn’t the only place wilderness happens. It can also come in the form of a hospital waiting room or doctor’s office. It can take the shape of a thorny relationship, a rejection letter, a sudden death, or crippling panic attack. They are times when we might believe we’ve been abandoned in our pain, times when we feel alone in our loss and fear. But Jesus has been here before.
And so it is the call of the church to proclaim as often as we can that there is no pain, no struggle, no level of despair that God does not understand. Jesus experienced the full range of human experience, including violence and death – and his resurrection is proof that he can lead us through our own desert places until we find our life restored.
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