Anyone who has tried to choose a restaurant with friends knows the tension it can create. Options multiply, nobody wants to impose, and minutes vanish. So much energy for a decision forgotten before the bill is paid.
Meanwhile, the choices that shape a life can receive only hurried attention. A decision to forgive or to stay bitter. To speak honestly or to hide. Around those moments, voices multiply. Advice comes from friends, family, headlines, and the constant hum of opinion. Even the good voices carry some fog, because sin has dimmed God’s light in the world and made our own beauty harder to recognize.
After his baptism, Jesus stands before a decision that will mark everything. He can begin preaching the Kingdom and walk the road toward Jerusalem, or he can step aside and keep his life safe. He does not decide in the middle of noise. The Spirit leads him into the desert, so that every voice but the Father’s can fall silent.
There, Jesus fasts. Hunger strips away the illusion of self‑sufficiency. Without the comfort of food, he physically feels his dependence on the Father. In that sharpened silence temptation comes. The devil offers alternatives that sound reasonable and even impressive. Use power to feed the hungry and win hearts. Put on a spectacle and be admired. Take authority and rule without the cross. Each offer is a shortcut away from the Father’s plan.
Jesus answers with the words of the Father, with Scripture. “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” Scripture is not a slogan for him. It is the Father speaking, the light that exposes what these temptations really are. Jesus trusts that the Father’s plan, even when it includes suffering, is the path to real life, because the Father’s love is trustworthy.
That is why the desert matters for Lent. These forty days are not a contest of willpower. They are a school for making the significant decisions of our lives the right way. Silence makes room for the truth that our lives are a gift, shaped by God’s creative love down to the smallest detail. Prayer places that gift back into the Giver’s hands. Fasting loosens the grip of comforts that drown out grace, so the heart can recognize what it truly depends on.
Some decisions will still need counsel and practical wisdom. Yet the deepest clarity comes when the heart rests before God long enough to hear him. In the quiet, God illumines the soul, showing the next faithful step, and revealing the road that leads to happiness.
As Lent begins, stepping into a small desert each day becomes a way back to joy. Real silence, even if brief. A simple fast that costs something. Time with the Scriptures that lets God’s word reveal what is true. Then, when the important crossroads arrive, the soul already knows where to listen, and the path that once looked impossible becomes, little by little, the path that makes us who we were created to be.