Temptation in the Wired Wilderness: A Sonnet for Lent

The season of Lent is, in the Church, a time for prayer and fasting. Giving up something that is in itself good or harmless (like abstaining from meat on Fridays, or giving up a favorite food or activity) is a way of learning how to be disciplined in the spiritual life, of recognizing our own weakness and distraction, and of becoming stronger in our faith. We will be better able to resist temptation to sin if we have learned now to say ‘no’ to our desires in the safe training ground of Lenten fasting.

And temptations will come – but often not as expected. As I reflected on Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, I was drawn more and more to think about the setting, not just the content of the temptations (for a set of really excellent sonnets that take on the latter challenge, read Malcolm Guite’s sonnet sequence “Sounding the Seasons,” now out from Canterbury Press).

When I think about the ‘wilderness’ today, even the desert, it’s likely to be in the context of a vacation trip to see beautiful scenery, not a place of desperate struggle with the spiritual forces of the Enemy. Rather, our wilderness is likely to be internal – or virtual.

Here is my sonnet on that theme. You can click on the title of the poem to hear my reading of it as well.

Temptation in the Wired Wilderness

***
This poem has appeared in God and Nature Magazine.
***

Dr. Holly Ordway is a poet, academic, and Christian apologist. She is the chair of the Department of Apologetics and director of the MA in Cultural Apologetics at Houston Baptist University, and the author of Not God’s Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith. Her work focuses on imaginative and literary apologetics, with special attention to C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams.

Share this post...

•