The First Week of Lent

Author: Nikki Brown Rice
February 26, 2021

Mark 1:12-15 reads,

“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Has it ever struck you that Jesus is baptized and the voice from Heaven declares him the beloved Son whom the Father is pleased with, and then immediately he is driven into the wilderness to be tempted? It’s truly like emotional whiplash. Why did Jesus have to go and endure this? 40 days in the dry, stony dirt with Satan as the identified tempter, and the wild beasts as some sort of company. Well, Jesus endures and emerges from those days changed surely, but whole. He goes then and proclaims that the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.

As I have sat with these verses as a meditation,  I have heard this answer emerge as an answer to why Jesus went through this time of temptation and trial and why we remember it every year in the season leading up to Easter.

Jesus had to put skin in the game. He was the son of God and the son of Mary. He had this incredible calling on his life and he had to experience something that made him understand why he chose God in the first place and why he needed God’s love. At the risk of oversimplifying it, whatever you love, whether it is God, something else, it shouldn’t be interested in hurting you. What you love should lead to life, it’s what you were created for. Now that doesn’t mean life won’t hurt, we will get bruised up and broken certainly. And yet what we serve, love, and believe should bring us through on the other side changed, but whole.

Lent is a season that asks us to examine what we love, what we serve, what we follow. It asks us to truly reflect on the things we are attached to, what we believe and how we act or don’t act according to those beliefs. It is a time to fess up, to dig deep, to put skin in the game—because there is no being subbed out unless we just want to walk through life numb and unaware.

As we continue to walk through these 40 days leading up to the cross and resurrection, you are invited to do some difficult, but wholesome work to be a disciple of Jesus. Will you follow Jesus into the wilderness as a beloved child of God? Will you find the strength to endure and emerge on the other side changed and whole? My prayer is we can all come through this journey this year, pandemic ravaged and just life ravaged as we have all been and say with Jesus, “The kingdom of God is here. I repent and I believe the good news.”

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