Study

DAILY READING

Luke 4:1-13

Wilderness 

When the Wilderness overcomes you, and covers you over like the darkness of a polar winter 

You will be by yourself, but not alone. 

For in the solitude, under the thick cover of the blinding absence of a warm sun, 

A strange beast, clothed in luminous forces, will invade your inner spaces. 

Whence the Stranger comes you will not know, as long as you are in the Wilderness. 

But its seducing call will bend you to its pull if it can. 

Promises of grandeur and glory, 

of power and position, 

of infinite sources of uncontrolled wildness, 

of blind, raw, original pulses of power. 

The promises incite you to radiate and conquer. Nothing is beyond the hunger of the passions. 

And when the rage for power explodes, the promises plummet; the abyss swallows the light. 

When the Wilderness overcomes you—and it will! 

you will be by yourself, but not alone. 

The Spirit is the most perfect companion in your solitude. 

Because the Spirit, like water flowing in the wilderness, becomes the Way itself. 

The Spirit and the water quench the thirst for life and lead the way out of the Wilderness. 

The Spirit in the wilderness loves courage. 

The Spirit, who like water carves a path out of the wilderness, is also the water that nourishes the courage to be yourself. 

It calls out from you the commitment to declare in the face of the temptation: 

I am not God, only God is God; 

yet I am a child of God, that is sufficient. 

And so, the stones turn into bread. 

My need for dignity does not require that I be worshiped. 

And I am empowered to fly, without the help of angels, above the turbulence of the Wilderness’ abyss. 

ACTION FOR THE DAY

Read today’s passage again, allow your eyes to settle on just one word. What could God be saying to you in that one word today? Spend just a few moments writing about how God might be speaking to you through that word today.