There is a moment early in Jesus' ministry that has always intrigued me.

Before he heals anyone, before he teaches, before any of it — the Spirit leads him into the wilderness. Forty days. Alone. Fasting. And then the temptations come.

I've never quite understood why it had to start that way. But the more I sit with it, the more I think it speaks to something true about life. From time to time, we all find ourselves in the wilderness. A diagnosis. A loss. A season when the ground shifts beneath us and nothing feels certain. Times when what we thought we knew — about ourselves, about the future, about God — gets tested.

The wilderness is real. And the forces that meet us there are real too.

The word devil comes from the Greek diablien — to split, to divide. In biblical thinking, the devil is not a cartoon figure. It is that force — personal or otherwise — that tries to split us away from God, away from each other, away from our own deepest selves.

And however you understand that theologically, the reality it points to is undeniable. A spirit of greed can settle over a corporation like a culture. Hatred can take over a person, or a whole community, in ways that seem impossible to explain. Addiction, cynicism, indifference — these forces are real. They are powerful. And they rarely announce themselves.

What I notice is this: they tend to come when we are most vulnerable. When we are tired, depleted, afraid. When the wilderness has gone on longer than we expected.

But here is what I also notice about Jesus in the wilderness.

He doesn't fight his way through it on his own strength. He fasts. He prays. He leans on what he knows to be true about God. When the temptations come, he reaches — not for a quick fix, not for the stones that promise to become bread — but for something deeper. Something that holds.

Even at the very end of his life, in the garden the night before he died, we find him in the same posture. On his knees. In prayer. Dependent.

That's not weakness. That's wisdom.

So if you find yourself in the wilderness today — and some of you are — this is my prayer for you.

May you lean on what you know to be true about God, even when you can't feel it. May you reach for the deeper source, even when everything else is promising faster relief. And may you find, as others have found before you, that there is a courage and a strength and a hope available in those moments that does not come from within you.

It comes from beyond you. And it is enough.

Prayer: God of grace, meet us in our wilderness today. Where we are tired, renew us. Where we are afraid, steady us. Where we are tempted to reach for the wrong things, redirect us. Draw us closer to you — and may we find, in you, everything we need. Amen.