H
e had not eaten for forty days and nights. His body starved, physically weak, he reclined on the barren earth of the mountainside, under a dead tree by the mouth of the cave where he spent his nights. There were perhaps thousands of these caves in the Judean countryside. His bowels had ceased to move and were it not for a cool pool of water recessed in one of the inner corridors of the cave, he would be dead.
This was a trial by fire. This was his passage, his initiation into service to God. At the beginning of a new phase of his life, Jesus had been led by the Holy Spirit to this specific spot. It could not have been much worse. He thought with meager comfort of Elijah sitting outside his cave wondering what would happen to him. At least he had the ravens! Were it not for the coolness of the cave’s interior, he might have perished under the burning sun in this desert place.
Dusk and the hours that followed were blessed relief. It was then that he would lay for hours staring at the stars. As he communed with the Father, he felt a kinship with them that none other would ever know. Now in a human body of a mere thirty years, in the periphery of his consciousness he was aware that eons ago, each celestial body had something to do with him. In this starved condition, his limited spirit now had trouble comprehending exactly what. On these starlit nights he mused until sleep tugged at his eyelids and he felt his undernourished muscles relax against the stone. It was then that he retired into the cave until the soft glow of dawn began to paint its dreary walls.
Each day came and went. Unrelenting hunger wracked his body. He had long passed the days when his stomach became numb to hunger. Its pain had returned with devastating demands. “Just a morsel of my brother’s venison!” As he thought about this, painfully bemused, he had a new appreciation for Esau as well as Elijah.
It was then that the tempter came.
