Happiness is about learning to be grateful for the good things in your life. Joy is about learning to be grateful even for the bad. It's about finding "plenty on the parched land," as Isaiah says - or rather, about seeing the parched land as a plenty.
The only way to reach such gratitude is through love. A person in love is grateful to go through the parched land, the barren desert, the wilderness, if it gives him an opportunity to express his love for the beloved. Jesus' temptation in the desert in Matthew 4 only makes sense in this way: the devil, as tempter, is not simply trying to get Jesus to disobey God's Law, he is trying to woo Jesus away from the Father He loves. The devil employs all the tricks of lust, because that's all the devil understands.
But Jesus would rather stay in the desert, in the parched land, than go to the land of plenty the devil offers. I feel that too often in our world where the "gospel of prosperity" reigns, so many people do follow the devil into that land of plenty - into a land admittedly full of good things - and think that God has led them there. They give thanks to God for that plenty, but meanwhile God is still calling to them from the desert.
Our deserts are manifold. They can come in the form of depression or mental illness. They can come as physical disease. They can come as the loss of the things or people we love. They can come as demons from our past: childhood trauma, bad romantic relationships, broken friendships. They can come simply in the form of the difficulties of everyday life: the people who annoy us, the coworker we are butting heads with, the mother who nags us, the children who make demands on our time.
When we are in those deserts, how do we behave? It's only human to long for the land of plenty. But we must always be vigilant that it is God, not the devil, whom we are following in our quest to get out of the desert. Sometimes the path the devil offers seems easier. Sometimes the path God offers only seems to lead more deeply into the desert. In fact this is often the case. But we must trust, as Jesus did, that if we follow God's path He will send angels to comfort us on the way. And it is only by following God's path that we can find true joy and true love.
The question must always be: if I truly loved God, what would I do? I think the path of love is always the path of gratitude. If we take for granted the fact that God loves us, then we must ask ourselves how He might be trying to speak His words of love to us in the deserts in which we ourselves find ourselves. How is He asking you to grow, to learn, to love? Perhaps He is teaching you patience, empathy, forgiveness. Or perhaps He is simply sitting beside you in the desert, staying awake for you as you endure your trials even though His own disciples fell asleep when they waited for Him. Perhaps He is waiting for you to turn to Him, to turn your sorrows over to Him, to weep in His arms.
I must be clear, though, that learning to be grateful for the desert does not mean we are not also called to a land of plenty. Traveling through the desert must always lead back to the re-creation of the garden. Embracing the cross does not mean embracing its injustice. We can be grateful that Christ was crucified for our sake while lamenting the injustice of a world that allowed Him to be crucified. The desert of suffering is not an end in itself. Rather, embracing the cross and the desert means embracing the truth that God can transform even a situation of pain and suffering into a circumstance of love.
This is how God is greater than injustice and suffering: not because He enables us to avoid them, but because He empowers us to confront them and transform them through love. During Lent we follow Christ into the desert because He followed us there first. He follow Him because we love Him and we cannot bear to be separated from Him. And we love Him because He loved us first. Peter told Christ in His moment of transfigured glory: "Lord, it is good for us to be here." Let us say that to Him also in the middle of the desert that we walk through with Him and He walks through with us: Lord, it is good for us to be here. Help us to see the plenty in the parched land.
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