day 2800: The Wilderness

“The Spirit then compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness…”

On Friday last week I wrote of the 40 years in the desert that Moses, Aaron and the Israelites endured. That’s a long time, but so is any amount of time that we are forced to go into any place, state of inactivity or activity that is restrictive or limiting to what we want to do or when we want to do it.  Let’s think hard about this feeling when we next make an assignment to someone who might cause them to give up family or personal time to meet a deadline.  Surely, we wouldn’t ask anyone to do anything we wouldn’t do ourselves, but we don’t always take the time or expend enough energy to understand what the full consequences are of the deadline given.  It’s something for to think more deeply about going forward.

Jesus went into the wilderness because “the spirit then compelled” him to do so. The definition of compelled is this: “force or oblige (someone) to do something.”  So, the idea of the wilderness for 40 days without food, water or company I imagine wasn’t His idea of a get-away vacation or anything He wanted to do that time.  But, He did it and at the end of the day, He was still the Son of God and could have resisted, refused or negotiated His way out of it, but like He didn’t so when on the cross, He didn’t fight back, He just followed the Will of God and went into seclusion. It might be that we are to now appreciate this time for Him more than we could have before.  Let’s remember that while we may not like it, the wilderness is also in God’s Will.

Reference:  Mark 1:12 (New Living Translation)

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