Waiting in the Wilderness

I know there are people who like winter, but I am not one of them. And as far as I am concerned, there is nothing worse than winter in March.

I’m not fond of the frigid cold of January or February either, you understand. In fact, November, December, January, February, March and sometimes April are all some of my least-favorite months in New England. But March is my least-favorite of my least-favorite months. It’s cold, it’s wet, and just to make it more fun, Daylight Savings Time arrives and snatches away whatever hope I had when in the last days of February when the sun finally began to rise before my alarm went off at 6 a.m. And that’s even before we get to the mud.

March is the wilderness of the year here in New England. The snow that was pretty and fun at the beginning of winter is now grey and annoying, blanketing the landscape and turning it into a barren wasteland. The skies are frequently grey, too, and while temperatures are warmer than they were a month ago, they often have a damp edge that makes the cold reach right down into your bones. March is when it feels like winter will last forever.

I thought about all this last Monday morning, as I walked the dog on a chilly, grey day with snow once again in the forecast, and thought about last Sunday’s Gospel, in which Jesus is driven into the wilderness after his baptism and tempted by Satan. Lent’s 40 days (not counting 6 Sundays) are modeled on the 40 days that Jesus spends in the wilderness. And while I imagine the wet and cold of a New England March is a far cry from the hot, dry wilderness of the Holy Land, I suspect they feel equally empty of life. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that a good chunk of Lent always falls in March.

Forty days is a long time, and even longer when your surroundings offer very little encouragement. I keep thinking about Jesus waiting in the wilderness for something to happen, particularly after the amazing experience of his baptism. And when it does, it’s Satan come to tempt him -- like snow and bitter cold blowing in after a tantalizingly brief March warm-up.

Was Jesus discouraged? Matthew’s gospel doesn’t say. He turns aside the temptations of Satan calmly and without apparent hesitation. Jesus stays true to the God who called him in baptism. He keeps on keeping on. And then, suddenly, the angels turn up and start ministering to him.

It’s actually a pretty good metaphor for the life of faith. There are times when we are aware of God’s presence with every breath, when we can see the Holy Spirit descending on us and feel God’s love and approval with an intensity that takes our breath away. But there are other times when God can seem very far away, when the winter goes on and on. It’s hard to believe God’s silence will ever end.

But spring always does come, eventually. We can trust in that, at least. We may not be able to *believe* it, precisely, but we can trust it. And so it is with God. Even in the midst of the wilderness, our task is simply to keep on keeping on. We don’t have to work at believing, at having faith. We just have to wait, stubbornly, because there’s nothing else to be done. Because we can trust that God will eventually bring new life out of the emptiness, even if we aren’t entirely able to believe it.

A couple days ago, the snow in my yard finally began to melt. For the first time since December, I could see the ground under the weeping cherry tree. And there were two green shoots with a little white blossom. The snowdrops are blooming.

Winter really is going to end.