WHY THE DESERT?

In the desert life is cut down to the barest necessities. Water is scarce. Shade is precious. There, among rocks and scorpions and the unrelenting heat of the sun, luxury is a thing unknown. And so it’s no surprise that when men and women are seized with a burning desire for God, they find the desert enticing. It’s God or nothing there.

The Lord Jesus went into the desert for forty days and forty nights. He followed the example of Moses and the Prophet Elijah, both of whom fasted forty days and forty nights in the desert of Sinai, fierce in their determination to find God.

Like the Lord Jesus, like Moses, like Elijah, you and I have gone into the desert of Lent, our foreheads smudged with the burnt ashes of desert palms, to find God. That’s what Lent is about. We may not realize that’s why we’re here, we may not know what we’re doing. But for the next forty days and forty nights, we’re invited, at least, to follow Moses and Elijah and the Lord Christ into the desert.

Few of us can go wandering off to the desert—and even if we could, we have families and jobs and bills and responsibilities. So we have Lent. Lent with its candy abstinence and meatless days (there’s always shrimp and even lobster); Lent with some extra prayers and solemn purples. Even under the Texas sun, though, the desert of Jesus’ Lent seems far off and more than a bit unreal.

It hasn’t always been so. For more than seventeen hundred years, some Christian men and women, determined to find God, have set their faces towards the desert in their search for Him. They’ve done it for the same reason Moses and Elijah and the Lord Jesus did: in the desert its God or nothing.

The stories of their desert struggles to find God have come down to us. If we want to uncover in ourselves the potential of Lent, there’s no better place than to learn from those who gave up everything to follow their Lord into the searing desert sun, living among the rocks and scorpions, fierce to find Him.

For the next forty days and forty nights, I’ll be passing along their words and telling you something of their stories. I hope they enrich your lives as they have mine. The fire of the desert has burned away everything except their desire for God—not counting the cost to themselves, they have found Him Whom they sought.

If we follow them at a safe distance this holy season, we may catch a few brief glimpses of Him, too.

"One of the brethren went deep into the desert to find Abba Joseph. When he came to his skete, he said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can, I read from the Scriptures, I fast as I am able, I pray and meditate daily, I live in peace and I try to cleanse my thoughts. What else can I do?' The old monk stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire reaching the sky and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become ablaze with the Creator.' ”-from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers