Wilderness

It's Thursday night, which means I'm tired.  By this point in the week, I'm simply exhausted, and no amount of caffeine can get me to 8pm without heavy eyelids.  I am downright nasty when I'm tired.  Kirsten the Terrible.  Just ask my husband.  I read into things, I snap back with an ugly tone in my voice, I make assumptions, I glare, I pick fights.  I play martyr.  I pout.  I roll my eyes.  Just go to bed, a voice of reason says inside my head.  Go to bed before you do more damage.  But I don't, not for a while.  Not before throwing out a few more jabs and selfish grumblings.

So I'm putzing around in the book of Matthew, reading slowly, absorbing, without agenda.  Kind of like meandering down a path in the wilderness, without a timeline for when I have to be back.  Stopping to smell a flower, watch a bird, skip stones in the creek.  Yesterday I stumbled along the first verse of chapter four:

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil."

The Devil did not lead Jesus into the wilderness.  The Spirit did!  Because of the desperation and strong temptations presented in those forty days and nights, we know Jesus has known human suffering.  We know He knows what it's like to be tempted.  We also know that we can trust that Jesus was in fact without sin.  What a gift Jesus has given us by going through this!   Jesus went without food for forty days and nights.  Forty!  I get crabby if I miss breakfast.  He had the power to turn the stones into bread as Satan suggested.  He had the power to escape the wilderness.  But He didn't.  He was obedient, under the most dire of circumstances.  It's not just that Jesus said "no" to the temptations the Devil laid out before Him; it's that he said "no" and magnified God through quoting scripture when he was starving.  When he was hurting, alone, weak, wasting away. 

And tonight, when I'm simply tired- not starving, not wasting, not lonely- just sleepy- I fell into the temptation to be unkind. 

I am super-blessed to have a forgiving husband, who lets these things go, Thursday after Thursday.  And how blessed I am that I can meander in God's Word, come back to Him, and He forgives me Thursday after Thursday too.  Amen.