A Beautiful Struggle
A Lenten Reflection
Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoy
Every year, I walk into the season of Lent with both expectation and apprehension. Expectation—because I know the Spirit will meet me in this wilderness. Apprehension—because I also know that wilderness seasons rarely come without struggle. The product of these forty days is beautiful, but the process is often arduous.
Lent is not a passive season but a deliberate stepping into discomfort—a Spirit-led descent into the wilderness where our hearts are exposed. Take a moment to consider what it truly means to be exposed—to be laid bare, uncovered, and vulnerable. When we strip away our routines, comforts, and habits, we often find ourselves unguarded before the Spirit’s work in ways that feel deeply uncomfortable. Yet, just as Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert, we willingly take this difficult road, disrupting the status quo of our lives to awaken to the idols we have embraced, the comforts we cling to, and the ways our hearts are bent away from God.
Lent is a reminder that we are people of the cross, and we have chosen the way of the cross. We do not drift into holiness. The cross-shaped life requires wrestling—against our flesh, our desires, our deeply ingrained habits. Fasting, repentance, self-examination—these are not ends in themselves, but means of reordering our hearts toward Christ. We starve our flesh in order to feast on Christ. We let go of lesser things in order to take hold of what is truly life.
As C.S. Lewis wrote, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” Lent invites us to stop being so easily pleased. To resist the appetites that dull our souls and to hunger for the only One who can truly satisfy.
The journey of Lent is a beautiful struggle—a season marked by both brutal honesty and breathtaking grace. We enter willingly, not because we love suffering, but because we love Christ. And at the end of this long road, we find Him. The reward is not our own righteousness, nor a pat on the back for enduring another Lenten season. The reward is Jesus Himself.
So, we walk into the wilderness, not reluctantly, but with open hands. Knowing it will be hard. Knowing it will be good. And knowing that, in the end, our hearts will be reoriented toward the One who walked this road before us.