Lent that time of year of lengthening daylight. Welcome back to Daylight Saving Time. It is the season of lengthening days in which we are called to do more with less. The more comes from letting more of God’s grace work on us and through us affecting others.
The more points to what is potentially in all of us and is awaiting to come out if and when we allow for God’s grace to act upon us.
Jesus goes into the desert to fast and pray. He lives there for forty days with little, having to rely more on the power that was within and less on those things that were outside of Him and what and who tempted Him to do otherwise.
Stripped of those things that were a part of His daily life, food, shelter, companionship, the affirmation and recognition from others, he is left to face His deeper self. He is tempted three times by the evil spirit and each time he had to find the strength of will and purpose to defy the appeal and what would have been a betrayal of His deepest desires and of God.
Like Jesus, we are invited to go out for forty days into the desert, the place of seemingly less so as to find the more in us and of our God. Jesus did this not only to embrace new life, but also to become new life. It is in God we will have true life. When we place greater trust in God, we are given the power to trust truly in ourselves and given greater, genuine life.
Each of us can readily admit, we have been tempted, making less of ourselves. So, to what is the Good Spirit calling me/us, to make right again, to restore order with what has become disordered, and to give genuinely more by having less, so that others, in some cases, may simply have?
Let us pray for the courage to look at those ways that make us less as persons and choose to relate and do things that are more loving of others and ourselves, and more respectful of this gift of Earth. Blessed forty days.