Finding God in Lent’s Quiet Places
Hello! I’d wish you a happy first week in Lent—but “happy” is such a bright, sunny word. These times that we’re living in have felt very dark for many of us, no matter who we are or what our political persuasion is. Old ladies being kidnapped; masked militia terrorizing thousands of people; millions of pages revealing atrocious behavior by people succumbing to their own shadow sides…
Shadow sides. We all have them. The great psychologist Carl Jung described them as parts within us that we keep hidden from our consciousness. Our psychological shadows motivate us to do things that can be very destructive to ourselves and others. Lent is a time for reflection, and in our inward-looking focus, a time for, perhaps, quietly experiencing our own shadow sides from a safe and spiritual point of view.
Jesus went to that quiet internal place for 40 days immediately after he was baptized. We don’t know what he thought and did for most of that time. He may have remembered the people he needed to forgive and forgave them. Maybe he needed to understand the miraculous blessing he’d just received from the Holy Spirit when John baptized him; maybe he needed to handle the dawning recognition that he was both a human being and the divine Son of God. How would he use, he may have wondered, his full and true powers? For his own country, which was now in the iron grip of Rome? For the world beyond his homeland? Or just for his own gratification?
There was much he had to examine, especially what may have lurked in his unseen human shadow side, if he even had one. Before starting his mission, he may have needed to be tested and tried as gold is by fire to melt away its impurities and fortify its strength. For this the Holy Spirit provided him with an opponent, Satan, a former angel who was consumed by the envy and jealousy rooted in his own shadow side. Satan challenged Jesus with three temptations: to manipulate for his own gain the natural world, the spiritual world and the material world at his feet. Jesus succumbed to none of it and sent Satan packing.
While greed, entitlement, possessiveness, corruption and endless other weaknesses rage everywhere on the planet, perhaps we can use these 40 days to find safe, quiet spaces in which to rest in our connection with our ever-forgiving God; and in that safe and loving security, we might meditate on our own shadow sides—the hidden motivators within us that interfere with our wellbeing and our relationships with the others in our lives.
May this be a blessed and deeply satisfying Lent for all of us—and yes, a happy one. Amen.
Lin Weber, Licensed Lay Preacher
Lent 2026
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