Fix it, it’s broken!

Life’s lesson says “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” But Lent’s lesson is “it’s broken, now is the time to fix it.” So the Bible reminds us to go into the desert so as to fix our broken lives. Jesus went into the desert immediately after his baptism by John the Baptist at the river Jordan. Patriarch Fouad Twal of Jerusalem tells us that the fast of Jesus “took place in the desert region four kilometers northwest of Jericho, on a mountain named “Quarantena” (or Quruntul in Arabic)”.

Prophets, like Moses and Elijah, went into the desert to fast and pray either for themselves or for the sins of others in preparation for an encounter with God. In the book of Prophet Hosea 2:16, God says, “I will allure her, I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart.” In the book of prophet Ezekiel 20:35-36 we read “then I will lead you to the desert of the peoples, where I will enter into judgment with you face to face. Just as I entered into judgment with your fathers in the desert of the land of Egypt, so will I enter into judgment with you, says the Lord God”. You will recall that after the children of Israel left Egypt, they wandered for forty years in the desert en route the Promised Land. It was while in the desert, as we read in Exodus 16, that the children of Israel started complaining to God that they had no water to drink, no food to eat and that they would have preferred to die in Egypt under force labor and slavery rather than in desert.

So what do we find in the desert? Life’s lesson informs us that in the desert we find a sea of sand, wild animals, hostile and unfriendly weather conditions. The one thing that is not common in the desert is water. There is heat in abundance and life can indeed be difficult. Here was where Jesus chose to go to after his baptism. Mark the evangelist reminds us in the first chapter of his Gospel, in the 12^th verse that: “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remind in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.”

Since the conveniences of life are lacking in the desert one can only be confronted by ones mind. Here all illusions of riches and wealth give way to a stag realization that we need a being bigger and greater than ourselves. Here we rely on God for everything. Here we experience our nothingness, our helplessness and our dependence on God. In the desert we have to make do with the barest necessities of life. In the desert God becomes our all and all. Oh yes, it is easy for God to speak to our hearts directly and we will listen to him. In the absence of material things around us, we become easily attached to God. In the desert it becomes easy to begin to fix our broken lives after we have stripped ourselves of the glories of life, our self-importance and our authority and the feeling that we are better than everyone else.

As we enter into this season of grace, let us create our own desert and take a long loving walk in and around it. Let us spend some time in prayer and constantly feel our need for God and our dependence on one another. Lent will only be meaningful after we have spent some time in our wilderness, our desert. So let us heed the lesson of Lent and begin to fix our brokenness in the desert created just to be with God and God with us.