Terri Elton: There have been many days. In fact, sometimes lately it feels like seasons where I've been journeying in the wilderness. Lent is one of those times we often think about journeying in the wilderness. I had the opportunity to think about journeying in the wilderness when I had a sabbatical, a year off from teaching, to write a book. I was focusing on what it was like to form faith in this context that we live in. And all of these stories from Scripture kept coming up about wilderness times. So as I was digging deep into those, I was doing research, and I had the opportunity to have a book called Journeying in the Wilderness come out in February 2020. I had done my research and I felt good about what was in the content, and then I had to live it. And so today, what I want to do is I want to take one of those stories, the story about Jesus in the wilderness. And I want to reflect on it as we think about what it means to journey through Lent this year. In Luke 4, we hear that after Jesus was baptized, he was sent into the wilderness. Now, we don't know a lot about the wilderness that Jesus was in. I can imagine it was probably an unruly place. I can imagine that it was times when he felt alone, or he felt isolated from whatever else was going on. I think about times in my life where I've had wilderness experiences, and there's a little bit of uncertainty that I'm always worrying what's around the corner. I wondered if he stayed up at night and was listening to the howling, or the noises in the night, and wondering who or what they were. I don't know about you, but I've had some unruly wilderness times. Sometimes they're actually in physical places that have both beauty and maybe some uncertainty, but they're all kinds of wilderness times in our life. I wonder maybe if you're in one right now and what it's like? One of the things that came up for me out of that text was I often focus on the God part of Jesus, the divine, the God's beloved son. And yet, this story reminds me that God is in Jesus is also fully human. That Jesus, like us, has all of the needs relationally. He got hungry. He also didn't know what was coming and had to live through that time as a human. One of the other things I want to, uh, read from the first verse in chapter four of Luke and it says, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left Jordan and was led by the spirit into the wilderness. Now I have to say, I don't really like that. I don't really like the idea that God, the Spirit, led Jesus into the wilderness. In my own life, I often think of wilderness times are of our own making. They're because I had a poor decision. Or maybe the circumstances I made bad decisions or things didn't go the way I had intended. It wasn't just that spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. It says God also led the Israelites into the desert for 40 years. That is a long time and God was the one that sent them there. Imagine spending 40 years wandering in wilderness times, knowing that there's the Promised Land, being promised that there's a land out there. And yet, for 40 years, for almost a whole generation, they wandered in the wilderness. So what happens when you think about God or the spirit maybe led you into a wilderness time? Can you imagine: what was God up to in that time? What was God nudging you in that time to think about and reflect on? Third thing I want to say about wilderness times is that from this text we see that Jesus is formed. Having just been baptized, these 40 days form Jesus around the mission to what he's called. If you read, I encourage you to do so verses 1 through 13. You see three times that Jesus is tested, and each of those times is around some aspect of the mission of what he's called to Earth to do. I don't particularly like being formed in the wilderness, but I will say we are formed whether we are intentional about it or not. My family has been in a long journey of walking with my mother in law through her last stage of life with dementia. That is a big wilderness journey, and while it was clear that there are certain things we wanted to do for her to make her safe, to surround her with community even when she didn't recognize people. One of the things I hadn't thought about until only in hindsight, was the way we were being formed of each other as a family and with those around us. Wilderness times are opportunities to think about formation and the kind of formation. What are we being formed around and what are we being formed for? I think Lent is a beautiful time to reflect on that formative part of our life. And the last thing I want to say about wilderness times is wilderness times make us take our eyes from what's present and look over the horizon into the future. But it also gives us a chance to reflect on the past. So how might you think about God's promises for you or for your community in this time? What is it from the past that is a rich resource to remember ways that God has been faithful, and maybe you've even forgotten. It is so easy to believe our stories are the only story. But we are part of a long legacy of people of faith that have journeyed through wilderness times and have come out holding onto God's promises for us and for our people. So in this Lenten journey, I invite you to lean in to the uncertainty of wilderness seasons. I want you to take the opportunity to actually believe God may be leading you into this time and forming you to be the person, the people, the community God has called you to be and has sent you on a mission. And in the midst of it all, I want you to remember that you, like Jesus, are a beloved child of God, named and claimed by the creator of the universe.

Faith+Lead: The Pivot podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith lead. Faith lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at Faithlead.org.