I am intrigued by Luke's account of the temptation Jesus faces in the desert.   And I would guess we all have an image of this temptation in our minds.  We have seen it depicted in paintings, with the devil pictured as a twisted figure with horns and cloven hooves, or, in films, as a dark figure lurking in the desert, waiting to pounce on Jesus when he is at his weakest.  But do these images really reflect the nature of temptation and sin in our own lives?  I know for me, temptation usually comes much less dramatically - in something so ordinary and innocent as a chocolate layer cake slathered in butter cream icing.   

Jesus was tempted not by the glamour of evil but rather by the apparent good each temptation offered.  What can be more innocent than a loaf of bread?  Yet in facing his temptation to turn that rock into bread, Jesus acknowledged that he was hungry not for food, but for God's presence, and turning that rock into bread would have been a misuse of God's power working through him.  Imagine what good Jesus could have done had he given into temptation and made himself a temporal king over the entire earth.  But Jesus knew that in order to win our salvation, he had to forgo an earthly kingship, dying instead as a criminal, rejected and scorned, offering his body and blood in reparation for our sins.  He was able to see beyond the apparent good that was offered him and to recognize what was more important, and what was more in keeping with his mission to bring salvation to the world.

We face temptations every day.  And most of the time, our temptations come to us not in the guise of a dark horned figure, but rather as that innocent loaf of bread.  They come to us as voices clamoring for our attention, offering us what is apparently good, or what will give us pleasure, or what will make life easier.  We need to be careful about the choices we make.  We need to be willing to ask ourselves difficult questions about what is truly important in our lives and what we truly need, versus what will make us happy for a fleeting moment, only to leave us empty and unsatisfied in the long run. 

While that layer cake may seem good for the moment, what will it do for me in the long run?  Going out and drinking too much may seem like the fun thing to do on a Saturday night, but what does that say about the fact that I am created in God's image and likeness, and that my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?  Engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage may be accepted-even encouraged by our society, but how can they be truly life-giving expressions of love and commitment without the permanence of marriage? 

Life is a series of choices - some easy to make, some very difficult - some that are clearly right and others that, no matter how tempted we might be to believe otherwise, are always wrong.  We are called to discern what is important and what is not, realizing what is right and good and what will only distract us from our relationship with God.  Even the acts of fasting and abstaining from meat on Fridays, and giving up something for Lent, are not empty exercises in themselves, but opportunities for us to remember what is most important in our lives.  They are opportunities for us to give back the first fruits referred to in the Book of Deuteronomy, by which we give thanks to God and acknowledge our total and utter dependence upon him.  They are opportunities for us to look beyond what will satisfy us only for the passing moment so that we can recognize that our hearts will be forever restless until we really understand what it means for them to rest in God alone.