Lent | Intimacy

Lent can feel austere.

But Jesus’ forty days in the desert followed on immediately after God declared: “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” And Jesus comes out of the desert enfolded by that Father-love. John’s Gospel, in particular, portrays this: “I only do what I see the Father doing…I and the Father are one…if anyone has seen me, they have seen the Father…”

Everything that Jesus DOES flows out of his understanding of who he IS – an understanding that is grounded in intimacy…intimacy that is grounded in his experience in the desert, even in the midst of pressure to denounce that very relationship.

Far from a summons from an austere father-figure, Lent is an invitation to experience intimacy with God.


May God the Father, who is pleased to love his children, enfold us in his love this Lenten season and beyond;

May God the Son, who is our model, teach us to embrace and rest in the Father’s love this Lenten season and beyond;

May God the Holy Spirit, who descended from heaven to Jesus and led him into the desert, come to us and lead us with the Son to our loving heavenly Father this Lenten season and beyond.

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Ephesians 3:17b-19


Lent