Lent and temptation

This Sunday’s Lenten readings include Jesus’ temptation. I think the temptations can be summarized as detours away from the cross. In each of them Jesus is tempted to be a Messiah that sidesteps suffering or as someone described it: “to fulfill the mission to which God has called him by means which God has not appointed”. In our hedonistic culture, this is indeed a very real temptation. Just look at the hundreds of quick-fix devices we have. All of them offer immediate results without any or minimal effort. “You can be thin by drinking this pill” etc.

Discipleship is still a process of the cross.
It involves suffering.
And wilderness.

But, and this is an emphatic but! But it’s all worth it.