Why the Desert?
A Desert Lent - Beginning Ash Wednesday 2024
If anyone is asking why they should bother with the desert fathers and mothers this Lent, I understand. The word “desert” is, by itself, hardly attractive. Add that to “Lent” with its connotations of ashes, fasting, and discipline, and it’s easy to see why anyone would wince.
As if that is not enough, it is tempting to ask, “What in the world do these odd bunch of folks living in the desert over 1,500 years ago have to say to us?” We who control our environments with a button, walk as little as possible, eat as much as we want, and communicate with scores of people in a flash seem to live in such a different time as to make the desert fathers and mothers irrelevant at best and maybe even harmful. After all, we have worked so hard to get to the place where we have so much. How can an old man living alone help a young man struggling with lust and his smartphone? How can a woman who has embraced solitude and poverty offer anything to a woman rising in her career? We can keep going on with the differences, but I think the picture is clear. It seems as if they are too outlandish for us.
There are two things to say in response. First, I have been surprised at how immediately applicable their sayings are to us. Very often, very little contextualizing and interpreting is needed. They know human nature, the wiles of the enemy, and the grace of God. None of these things have really changed in the intervening millennia and a half. Second, sometimes we need a dose of something jarring and outlandish. If we don’t we will continue to numb ourselves with luxuries and deafen our ears with noises while the cry of our brother and the movement of the Spirit goes unnoticed. The desert fathers and mothers are just strange enough, just foreign enough, just extreme enough to yank us out of our anesthetized complacency - even if for a half moment. And a half moment is more than enough for grace to save us.
So, with those thoughts in mind, why wouldn’t we want to give them a hearing in a season focused on repentance and renewal?
Getting Ready
I recently listened to a conversation between Andrew Arndt and Nathan Foster. Andrew is a campus pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs and author of a book on the desert fathers and mothers. I highly recommend this conversation!
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I think they’re worth listening to! Good stuff friend!