Matthew 4:1-11

He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. (Matthew 4:2)

Afterwards? What about during the forty days? What about the evening of the first day? I have trouble skipping lunch, let alone skipping food for over a month! Perhaps Matthew is referring to more than hunger pangs. 

Our natural response to any kind of death is grief. We grieve over what has been lost. We long for a familiar touch, a familiar smell, a familiar laugh. Grief is our emotional response to the empty hole that now exists in our life. It’s interesting to note that the Devil showed up in Jesus’ wilderness at this very place of emptiness and offered solutions for Jesus’ hunger. To cave in to the temptation would have certainly filled the void, at least temporarily, but Jesus recognizes that new life can only come from God.

When we take on fasting as a Lenten discipline, we do so to pay attention to the ways we instinctively cave in to immediate gratification. If this is to be a time of dying, there will be grief. How will you respond to the hunger?