“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.” (Deut 8:2-4) Jesus quotes one line of this as he is tempted to turn the stones around him into bread. The rest must have been in his mind, too – he was, in a sense, rehearsing Israel’s time in the wilderness through his own. He knew, then, what Israel had a hard time trusting: that God would meet their needs. He comes to a place of hunger, and does not scramble desperately to alleviate it. Part of him must have wondered at being given stones and no bread all this time (“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” Matt 7:9). But ultimately he landed in a place of trusting that he did indeed have a good Father, who would provide not only for him, but for the people he loved. Sometimes it’s easier to accept a lack of some kind on our own behalf, but when it comes to the people we love, we are left with so many questions. Jesus was offering his trust on so many levels in saying “no” to this temptation. And, in a way, he undoes what had been done in the Garden, when Eve and Adam distrusted God’s good heart for them, and took and ate something they were not offered, because they believed it would give them something God was withholding from them. Jesus, conversely, trusts that he is where he is supposed to be, and that his Father is giving him what he needs, when he needs it (and sometimes that will be actual food, but right now, it is God’s own words). How do you see these temptations in your own life? Where are *you* being invited to trust?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2022-03-15 14:06:46 UTC