Again by the miracle of delayed posting I bring you a thought for another day in Lent. As this goes up onto the web I am in School leading an early morning Lent session on the theme of Temptation, a very Lenten idea indeed.
How often have you, like me, had a real high point - a moment of real triumph or breakthrough, only to come suddenly back to earth with a bump? Jesus set off from the Jordan after His baptism and walked into the wilderness and got tempted - what on earth was he doing?
The thing about a temptation is that it is a temptation - it has a power or a grip. Something shrugged off as easily as Jesus does when the Gospel reading is read in a fairly flat tone is simply not a temptation, it's a passing idea. I can only imagine Jesus wrestling with these things; wrestling because in their own way each one of them would give him a quick 75% of what he had come to do, and without the pain and heartache. Surely this is a win-win offer!
Most of us would be unwilling to share publicly the things that are our strongest temptations because they actually say something really deep and true about us, and not just that we are flawed. Jesus allowed the temptations to give him a sense of clarity about his mission, as he wrestled with them his true course of action, the one with real and deep eternal consequences, slowly became apparent.
So we must continue to pray for the strength to resist the things which tempt us most, especially those of us in Ministry where the temptation might be to grab something that will give a quick fix to a problem or an issue, but where the true cost of such a solution becomes apparent much later; but also we ought to learn to be more aware of our temptations.
Why is this a temptation for me? Why is this a weakness in me, maybe, what am I really, truly craving?
Lord Jesus, tempted yet without sin, give us your strength to withstand the temptations, but help us also to learn from them to recognise our fault lines and fragility and in so doing make us more like you.
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