What would you think about if you could think about anything?

 Lent asks this question of us: Who are you becoming in the wilderness?

At minimum we might be thinking about this and many questions differently, pondering them deeply. At minimum Lent invites us into a freedom of consideration not experienced previously.

Pastor and author A. W. Tozer once wrote, “What we think about when we are free to think about what we will – that is what we are or will soon become.” This challenging sentence presents challenging opportunity. ( I still have to read it at least three times to begin to understand it!)

What do you think about when you are free to think about anything you want? assumes we are even able to access such freedom, to cast off the shackles of shoulds!

Many of us think this a crazy absurd question. From the moment we are born we are taught to “think” certain things, what to eat, how to act, how to feel.

We are bombarded with the should of becoming…or we are becoming the shoulds.

Jesus bids us into the wilderness of Lent, or of our lives, to help us undo those imposed thoughts and feelings and to experience a freedom never known.

It is difficult to hold wilderness and freedom together in the same sentence. Fear gets in the way and tries to sever the bond. It would seem that wilderness is about imposing thoughts and feelings of anxiety and how to escape. And to embrace or at least try on: how long dear Lord?

Yet the cornerstone of our faith is that lament: how long dear Lord how long, as it not only releases fear and anxiety but allows us to experience a never before known freedom just behind the release, like an exhale just before an inhale.

At minimum the Lenten answer is “I am becoming a freer thinker”

At maximum “I am becoming my fullest liberated unique self”