In Lent we imitate Jesus' journey into the wilderness. After being baptized, Jesus takes his leave on a soul-searching journey into the desert. He seeks peace in what it means to be the Son of God, and all that is being asked of him. He fasts and prays. He encounters temptation. Ultimately, Jesus shows us a journey of willingly going into the belly of the beast – drawing upon the strength gained as he spends time with his Father and learns what trust is all about.

Lent is the time when we imitate this journey into hard places: the griefs of our own lives, the sorrow of life in an imperfect world, the barriers we put up to God, our lack of trust in our divine Maker. However, we go willingly because we know it is there that gifts await and there is so much to learn. We go willingly because there in the dark and wild places, Christ went before us.

This stole for Lent tells the story of going into that wilderness. A part of the cross series, this stole begins at Ash Wednesday with the cross of palm ash smudged on our foreheads- marking us as Christ’s own. At times the wilderness in our lives feels like Jesus’ stark desert (on the left) where we feel empty, alone, and in a wasteland. At other times wilderness can be intensely full and overwhelming (on the right), like feeling lost in a west coast forest. The swaths of rising green remind us of this wild intensity. When we stay with these hard times, we identify with the broken Son of God, and we participate in the divine cycle of death and resurrection that is for us all; the Paschal mystery.

Thanks be to God!