Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested…
(Matthew 4:1, NIV)
As I stepped off the paved parking lot onto the dirt trail leading into the forrest along Skyline Drive, just northeast of Waynesboro, Virginia, a rush of reality like I’d never felt before, and an overwhelming feeling I’d bit off more than I planned to chew, set in. I would spend the next week in the wilderness with my former pastor and friend Bill, accompanying him along the Shenandoah National Park section of his Appalachian Trail thru-hike. This would prove to be the longest walk I’d ever taken, and the most real I’d ever felt. And also the most sore, tired, and smelly - again, real.
A week prior, sitting in my quiet house in a quiet enough neighborhood with my usually quiet dog Hilda, I received the phone call I’d been waiting for all summer. I knew my former pastor, from my time in North Carolina during graduate school, was attempting a thru-hike of the AT. This would be a formidable challenge for young, healthy, limber folks but was an astonishing feat for my overweight and near-retirement-aged friend. I had told him to look me up when he got to Waynesboro, a town close to the trail where many hikers take a rest to resupply and find some comforts of civilization for a day along their way north. It was early June when I got the call - Bill was ready for a break from the trail. I picked him up a half-hour later and we spent several days at my home before he took off again, this time bringing me with him for the next leg of the hike.
I’d anticipated hiking with him for a stretch of the trail prior to his arrival, but I was woefully unprepared for the rigors of an actual AT thru-hiker’s pace. For starters, my gear was all wrong and way too heavy. We took a trip to the local outfitter to fix those issues. More importantly, and a fact I’d completely ignored in ‘preparing’ for this trip: I’d never hiked more than a few miles at a time, and never overnighted during a backpacking trip. Bill spent a couple days resting himself and preparing me as best he could for the week to come. We made our plan for entry, returning to the trail where he’d left off, and for my exit at the northern end of Shenandoah National Park, arranging for my ride to pick me up at a certain place and time. We now had a deadline to meet as well, since mobile phones didn’t work at all once you entered the backcountry in those days.
The trip would turn out to be one of the best experiences of my life, and nearly every single step of the journey was a positive moment for me. However, those first few hours, and especially the first minutes, walking into the unknown and away from every comfort I’d become used to, was especially daunting. As I think back on those first moments, the overwhelming feeling of the real sticks with me. The smells and sounds and sights - there was nothing artificially flavored or staged for television or exaggerated for internet appeal. Suddenly the world I’d been living in seemed phony. This world was undeniably real. The hike, the challenge to my mental and physical endurance, was not a test.
Jesus turned his back to civilization, with its protections and sustenance and relative comforts of the day, and headed into the wilderness immediately following his baptism. There, he’d become hungry and thirsty and tired and sore, and likely even smelly, as he was tempted and tested by the Enemy. For forty days, Jesus would endure a reality like none he’d ever experienced. Away from the clamor of the world, he could hear his Father more clearly. Away from the busy-ness of his daily labors, he could better see the works of his Father’s hands. Away from the cooking ovens and meat pots of his home, he could smell the freshness of God’s Spirit, the breath of heaven that led him into this lonely place. This real place. In so many ways, this was not a test at all. It was preparation for being real among the phony world to which he would return to save. The Enemy may have said some words to Jesus, but we should all know that Jesus was little tempted by that old snake. What I could imagine was that Jesus had been worn down by loneliness, fatigue, hunger, thirst, depression, anxiety… the list goes on. The list sounds a lot like my own list. And likely yours, too. The real temptation, as it seems to me, was to not turn back to the easier life he’d left before the wilderness. I would have been tempted to give up. I would have been tempted to go home.
In fact, I was tempted to go home. Fifteen minutes into the hike with Bill, I wanted to turn back. In fact, the only thing that kept me going those first few miles was my pride. I didn’t want to admit that, as a grown man, I was scared and homesick. That pride kept me going for the first few miles. Then we’d walked too far to turn around, and I had no phone signal, and it was beginning to get dark. So, I was committed. By the next morning, I was a new man. I’d awakened to the real world that morning, and I had already begun to distance myself from the softer, weaker man I’d been before the hike. Fast forward to my exit day from the trail - I was not excited to be heading back to the phony world I’d come from. However, when I did re-enter my old world, I wasn’t the same person. I was fit for a challenge as I’d never been before. My senses had been opened to a whole new creation. I could walk anywhere with God by my side.
This Lent, that is the next forty days (plus Sundays - they don’t count - but that’s a story for another post!), be set apart from the phony. Awaken to the real all around you. There are people crying, hurting, hungry. Help them. There are smiles and dreams and doubts in your own home. Love them. There are ways to give your gifts that you’ve been looking past for years. Give them. The season of Lent is not just a time to ‘give up’ or ‘take up’ something symbolic or superficial, like the time I gave up soft drinks (wow - what a sacrifice I was willing to make for my faith!). The season of Lent is a time to look inward by noticing the outward. When you see the real that has been hiding in plain sight all around you, finally, you can begin to meet the real You - the You God has a plan to use and to bless and to grow.
This is NOT a test.
In Christ,
J.M.D.