During Lent we make a spiritual journey with Christ into the wilderness.  Sadly, some people don’t have to wait until Lent for such an experience for much suffering blights their lives.  We don’t have to wander very far in our village to discover those who experience pain, illness, bereavement or sadness of many kinds. For them it seems that God really plays it rough sometimes.  Yet God has ways of breaking into the suffering and in many and various ways shows a living care and concern for them.  During the opening days of Lent the image of the wilderness is very much uppermost in our thinking – we all from time to time have wilderness experiences.  And, in these experiences, it seems to me that one of the things God does is to teach us to live by faith, to put our trust in Him, increasingly to live in dependence on His grace.  We must all learn how to trust in God.

The people of God in the Old Testament (and this is particularly prominent in the Book – Exodus) are described as a pilgrim people.  They are an exploratory people.  And that image of faith as exploration is full of promise, full of demand.  An image of exploration is a vital one if we are to remain alive and alert to a Living God rather than be trapped in a fossilised religion.

Now when we remember that marvellous Old Testament account of the journey through the wilderness, we see exactly what happens when the going gets rough.  Having escaped from Egypt and now in the depths of the wilderness the people soon begin to murmur and they attack Moses – “Why did you lead us out of Egypt if we are going to die here in the wilderness?”  And Moses senses that the real thrust of their anger is against God and he says to God, “They are murmuring against you but they are taking it out on me”.  When you read the psalms - which I hope that you do often, especially during Lent for they contain much comfort as well as challenge – you will find this same attitude but there you will also find – God reaching out in love to those who wrote the psalms as they question Him – “God, are you really there?”  Is the Lord in our midst or not?  All of us ask that same question sometime or other.  It’s a passionate cry from the heart known to anyone who really seeks to follow in the discipleship of Christ.  “Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks, so longeth my soul after thee, O God – My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God”.   Notice that the psalmist actually pours out his deepest feelings.  Many of us don’t – we bottle things up – and that’s a mistake.

So the wilderness is not something that we need to be afraid of, it’s not something that we need to run away from.  It’s not something we need to skirt.  It is indeed a good place to be because there God is able to do much more with us than when things are going well.

One final thought – I am absolutely certain that in the wilderness God does indeed provide us with sustenance.  He provided the people of Israel with manna and with water springing from the rock.  Similarly he spiritually provides for us and nourishes us on our pilgrim journey through the wilderness of this life – He constantly tells us “This is my body – This is my blood” “Do this in remembrance of me” – these are the constant reminders of our salvation.  Whoever comes to me, says Jesus, will never hunger.  And whoever believes in me will never thirst.