Today I read this post and in it Tuhina Verma Rasche talks about the wilderness of Lent and about waiting in the desert and about it being a time of discomfort.

We choose to fast with our Lenten disciplines (whatever form that takes) in order to strip away our fallback comforts and dis-comfort ourselves. We choose to wander in the wilderness. 

We do it so that God may search our hearts and reveal the Not Good within us and within the world. We do it so that God may reveal a fuller picture of Good to us. And these two revelations lead us to repentance as they expand our thinking and call us to Light, even in the midst of Darkness.

 (I love the connection Verma Rasche makes between Advent and Lent in her post too!) 

But the frustration of fasting and wandering in the wilderness almost always comes before this revelation of light…

For day after day they seek me out […] They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them. 

‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’

Isaiah 58:2-3

I think we feel this frustration because we mistake the reasons for fasting. We hope that if we do this well enough or sacrifice hard enough or wait long enough or repent of enough then God will have to respond and it will surely be in our favour. 

But the disciplines of Lent that take us into desert places are not about us, they are about God in us (God with us!) revealing Not Good and Good. And God is Good, God is Light, God is Present, even in the wilderness and the waiting and the discomfort and the silence. 

As we wait, trusting and knowing that God is with us, we see that only God can turn the Not Right to Right. We see that our part is simply to make space for and live out the change caused in our hearts as the fullness of this I am God transforms our minds.

Because one of the gifts God gives us is that we can change and we can step into more Good and Right and be bringers of Light to the darkness around us. As Verna Rasche puts it:

“What will be not just your Lenten practice, but your practice to fight the powers of this world and of Empire, especially with the current days being marked with acts of violence against a number of marginalized groups? 

[…]

How will you wait in the midst of the discomfort, yet finding what gives you the breath of the Spirit of God at the same time?”

Which brings me back to the words of Isaiah, which tell me that my fasting will always be frustratingly meaningless unless it  seeks Light and brings Light in the dark and desert places, allowing God to turn Not Right to Right, within us and through us.

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

[…]

Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon.

Isaiah 58:8 & 10