First Sunday in Lent

Today’s gospel reading is Luke 4:1-13 in which we hear of how the devil tempts Jesus after Jesus returns from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness.
Pastor Beth asked us ‘Aren’t we all traveling through this wilderness?’ and what does the word wilderness mean.  Some answers given were that it is a vast place of fear that is lonely, unpopulated by humans, desolate, dark, abandoned.  The wilderness of life.
The dust we came from and the dust we return to is a reminder of our mortality beginning and ending with God.
Each day we are challenged with the question ‘What kind of child of God will we be?’
remembering that God promises to be with us forever.