Into The Wilderness

I was hesitant about taking on a Lent Challenge this year, because I didn't want to give up half way through. But I have found inspiration in an unlikely place. This is a picture called "Christ in the Wilderness- Driven by the Spirit" and was painted in 1942 by that most eccentric English artist, Stanley Spencer.
SS challenged himself to paint 40 pictures- one for each day of Lent, on the theme of Christ in the Wilderness. After spending fifteen years on this project, he had only managed sixteen sketches, and eight finished canvasses. 
I am not aiming for 40 works of art, just a daily acknowledgement that there is too much stuff in my life, and it is getting in the way of other things. Four days in, I am doing OK. 
At the start of this week I was preparing a Sunday School lesson about Jesus and the Temptations - and that was how I discovered these pictures. They are certainly thought provoking.
Because I grew up with the King James' Version, my childhood mental images had Jesus 'in the desert' [sand dunes, the occasional camel or palm tree...] but really it should be 'in the deserted place' - i.e. away from other human beings - and Spencer has made that 'the wild place' - the wilderness. In his paintings he reflects on Jesus 'getting back to nature' [more about that in future posts] I'm not 100% sure about the rather tubby character here, who looks as if he should be en route to Slimming World. 
...But maybe Spencer has a point. Other artists have depicted Jesus being tempted as a thin, almost skeletal figure, desperate for stones-turned-into-bread. But perhaps the artist wants to show us that Jesus has come away from his home, where Mary, the good Jewish mother, was always busy trying to feed her son. There he would have learned to savour his meals, and be grateful for all the blessings around him - fresh fish from Galilee, lamb from the sheep on the hillside outside Nazareth, juicy figs and dates picked from the trees near his home. And as a carpenter he'd have developed muscles, from his daily manual labours. This was a young man with a healthy appetite for food. And that would surely make the temptation so much harder - and the overcoming of it so much more important.
Although not the first picture to be painted in this series, this is the first in terms of the biblical story [Matthew chapter 4] I love the determined expression on Jesus' face, the way he is grasping at the branch to pull himself forward, and his bare feet gripping the uneven rocky ground beneath him. 
And I draw strength from the truth that there is no part of my life's journey that is unknown to Jesus, and he will be with me through every challenge I face, whether great or small. And if I stumble, he will help to get up and keep going.