lost in the wilderness

My daughter loves a TV show about folks who are battling the wilderness of Alaska.  These are pioneers who grapple with the weather, lack of conveniences, and risks of living where wild animals are both close and deadly.

Few of us would make this choice.  The risks are very real; one could get snowed in for long periods of time.  One's food supply could run out; your source of heat could fail; your appendix could burst.....and there are very few people nearby who can be of any help at all.

Yet all of us struggle in some kind of wilderness, even if our wilderness looks like office politics or horrendous traffic jams or governmental incompetence or even lack of health insurance.  We all live in a reality show even if there are no cameras to catch our every move.  We call that reality show: life.

And life can be its own wilderness: testing and tempting us at every turn to store up more than enough goods, to protect ourselves always and to amass sufficient power to keep us safe.  Prosperity, protection and power.  It is our 3 point system for surviving even if it means surviving at the expense of others.

If you keep this in mind, you may find more bridges between the scene between Satan and Jesus in the wilderness (Mt. 4) and our day to day existence.  In the first temptation, Jesus is tempted to turn stones into bread.  Not one stone into bread to ease his hunger, but all the stones.  'Take care of yourself, Jesus.  You deserve it.  You are hungry.  No one can blame you. Don't chance that tomorrow there will be nothing.'

Jesus' response is this, 'humans don't live on bread alone, but on the very wisdom that comes only from God.'  For some of us, it is not a very satisfying response.  God is good, but hunger is hunger.

 But what if we paraphrased it this way, 'our primary task is not to take care of ourselves, but to take care of others.' It takes strength and fortitude and discipline to follow this lead.  Later we will watch as Jesus feeds 5000.  That is his calling, to feed others, not to feed himself.

Being a disciple means following this same path: to care for others before caring for ourselves.  Now, I don't mean in a pathological way, but rather, to move off the dead center of our own ego and begin to open our eyes to our neighbors, to see 'us' rather than simply 'me'.  This is a critical move in a life of faith or, if you prefer, a life of spirituality.  We cannot be spiritual people if the only spirit we are filled with is our own.

Wandering around in any kind of wilderness makes us more susceptible to this most basic of temptations.  It is no wonder that the devil started there.  Bread is everyone's entry level drug.  Jesus teaches us:  we feed, and as a result, we are fed.  

What do you think?