"How did you feel

when you come out [of] the wilderness? (How did you feel?)
Like leanin' (leanin'), leanin' (leanin'), leanin' (leanin' on the Lord!"

Our Scripture readings and the sermon last Sunday focused on Jesus' fast for forty days in the wilderness, after which time He was tempted by Satan. (Call me slow on the uptake - I'll agree with you - but I don't think I'd ever connected forty days of Lent with forty days in the wilderness before...) I have always marveled at Jesus's responses to Satan. I've pictured a larger-than-life figure, not a man who's starving because he's gone more than month without eating anything. So I wondered this Sunday about the "temptation" part of this equation: How did Jesus look when Satan told him to turn a stone into bread? Did He pick it up? Did he smell it as if it were a loaf of bread, open his mouth to take a bite? Did He cast His eyes heavenward before telling Satan that man cannot live on bread alone? Was His heart heavy and his throat dry?

I confess that I'm often guilty of think of Jesus as human, but not *really* human. But if He hadn't been tempted in every way, as I am, I don't suppose I'd have the faith that I do that His Holy Spirit intercedes for me with groans that words cannot express.

Something for me to chew on, especially when my eye is twitchy and my remote-control finger is itchy...