Hungry in the Empty Desert

Right after the most wonderful day, the day the sky tore open at the river and his Father called him beloved, Jesus walked out into the desert.

A desert is a hard place to be. Nothing soft grows there, and nothing green, only rocks and sand and sky going on and on. There was no table set for supper, no bed waiting, no friend to talk to in the dark.

Jesus stayed there forty days, and the whole time he did not eat one bite. Can you imagine how hungry he was? So hungry his tummy ached. So hungry he felt weak and shaky and small.

That is when the tempter came, the enemy of every good thing. He came to whisper, the way he always does, when you are tired and hungry and alone.

"You're so hungry," he whispered. "Look at all these stones. You could turn them into warm bread. So easy. Why wait? Why suffer? Take the quick way."

And Jesus could have. He really could have.

But he said, "No. People do not live by bread alone. They live by every word from my Father's mouth." Jesus was hungry for bread, but he was hungrier still to do what his Father said. He trusted his Father, even with an empty tummy.

Then the tempter tried again. He spread out all the kingdoms of the world, shining and golden. "I will give them all to you," he said. "Just bow down to me. One little bow. The shortcut to the crown."

But Jesus would not bow. "I worship my Father," he said. "Only him." He would wait for the crown his Father had promised, even if the road there was long and hard.

One more time the tempter pushed. "Throw yourself down from the highest place," he said. "Make God catch you. Prove he loves you." But Jesus would not play that game. "Do not test God," he said. "Trust him."

And the tempter slithered away, beaten. Then angels came and cared for Jesus there in the lonely desert, gentle as you'd tuck in someone you love.

Long before, there was a garden, soft and green, with everything good to eat. And the very first people heard that same whispering voice. "Take the quick way," it said. "Don't wait. Don't trust." And they listened. They reached for the wrong thing, and everything broke.

Long after the garden, God's children wandered through a desert too. They got hungry there, and instead of trusting, they grumbled and grabbed and went their own way, even while God was raining down manna, sweet bread from heaven, every single morning.

But here, in this desert, stood a new kind of man, hungrier than any of them and more alone than any of them, and he would not grab or bow or take the easy, wrong way out.

Jesus passed the test no one before him had ever passed.

And he was not standing strong only for himself. He was holding fast in the empty place for you, so that one day he could carry you safely through every empty place of your own. Turn the page, and you will meet him again from the very beginning: the Word who was there before the first star.