40 Days with the Holy Spirit: Fresh Air for Every Day

READ Mark 1:12–13

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

MEDITATE

Our daughter, Chloe, was born during a frigid Chicago night after a long day of labor. We were ready for our wee bairn, as the Scots, with whom Priscilla and I had spent a lovely year, would say. We’d gotten her small room in the back of our third-floor apartment ready and left the light on at night. I’d written a last letter to my parents about the serenity of waiting. We’d ordered a bright red stroller—a gift from my folks. After thirty hours of labor, out she came—and whoosh. Before we knew she was a girl, the nurses took out the monitor they’d screwed into her skull and whisked her off to pediatric intensive care, where they inserted needles into her tiny toes, attached a thermometer to her chest, and set her, all alone, under a heat lamp.

How harsh! How frightful! They wrenched Chloe from the coziness of her mother’s belly—a mother who ate right, exercised well, and waited with delight—and introduced her to the hard light (literally, as she lay under a heat lamp) of reality.

I can’t help but think of Jesus’s baptism and temptation as a wrenching birth. Jesus leaves the water and basks in the intimacy of God’s delight. Yet immediately—that’s how Mark puts it in his gospel—the Spirit drives him away from this perfect scene. With no time to linger in the divine presence, Jesus is driven out into the desert.

Driven out. This is an explosive verb. Don’t miss it.

The Holy Spirit drives Jesus out in the same way that Jesus would drive out demons (Mark 1:34, 39), drive out leprosy (1:43), drive out the money-changers from the temple (11:15). The gentleness of a dove at Jesus’s baptism evaporates; the force of the Spirit emerges, driving Jesus out into battle with Satan.

This is the first action of the Spirit in Jesus’s adult life—and it’s jarring. Jesus can’t for an instant remain on the shores of the Jordan River, basking in the words beloved and my son. The Spirit, which descended upon him as gently as a dove, now drives him into the wilderness immediately. There isn’t a moment to breathe in the majesty and mystery of his unforgettable experience.

The ruthlessness of this action is matched by its necessity: in the desert, not along the shores of the Jordan River, Jesus’s calling is put to the test.

Once he arrives in the desert—and not a minute before—Jesus starts to grasp his authority for real. The simple detail that Jesus was “with the wild animals” points to this. Desert animals posed a threat to Jesus, but the words he was with express contented camaraderie: Jesus was with his inner circle of followers (Mark 3:14), with a formerly demon-possessed man after his exorcism (5:18), and with Peter (14:67). Here, at the start of Mark’s gospel, the phrase he was with communicates Jesus’s unlikely coexistence with wild animals.

Alongside this, Jesus experiences the angels as his servants. In fact, the verb waited on or served could just as easily mean worship.

In the hostility of the desert, then, Jesus begins to grasp the sort of leader he will become. Two details—peace with animals and angelic service or worship—come together to underscore his authority in heaven and on earth.

Jesus exited his desert trial a leader, with clarity of vocation. He came back from the wilderness, Luke tells us, galvanized to teach. “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit [full of inspired resolve] returned to Galilee” and “began to teach” (Luke 4:14, 15). He might have learned his vocation at the dove’s descent, but he came to cherish it while under attack.

In much more modest terms, I’ve learned how testing and trials can clarify our vocation. About ten years ago, I took my family to Munich for a research leave. I was enthralled—except that I was nearly crippled by excruciating back pain. I used exercise bands to tie myself to my desk chair so as not to lean forward and inflame the nerve that ran down my leg. In the tug of war between excruciating pain and my vocation, I learned what I love to do. I love to write. I just do. It’s my calling.

A decade earlier, the Spirit tested another dimension of my vocation. One Thursday morning, I woke up with a start before dawn and felt an urgent need to pray. (Actually, I heard loud and clear the command, “Pray!”) I trundled downstairs and opened my Bible accidentally—or providentially—to Isaiah 42:1: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.” Within three hours the associate dean of a nearby university invited me to lunch. Within six, the dean offered me a contract. In a single morning, I had received a call from God, a call from the associate dean, and an offer to teach. But my joy was short-lived. Within two years, a new dean eliminated my position. I was heartsick but continued to teach, while grappling with the clash between the quiet words of that dawn and the disquieting words of that dean. What did I learn from this bitter experience? I love to teach. I just do. It’s my calling.

REFLECT