The excessive level of our tour by means of Morocco was at all times meant to be the camel trip within the desert.

The journey was designed that means; it was a giant, country-wide loop. We started within the Moroccan port metropolis of Tangier, having arrived from Spain by the use of the Strait of Gibraltar. Our tour set out from there, weaving by means of cities huge and small, however at all times with the promising attract of the Saharan Desert drawing nearer and nearer.

We’re going to trip camels within the desert.

Even in a rustic so wealthy in tradition and historical past, the mystique of the desert remained high of thoughts. My spouse and I had been giddy. What an journey! I keep in mind the night time we arrived on the outskirts of the Sahara. Our little group was handled to a easy meal of roasted veggies and couscous. It was to be an early night time, as a result of it could be an early morning.

We had been assigned tents out within the sands and suggested to decorate warmly. The desert was chilly and unforgiving. “After we wake you up, rise up,” our guides mentioned. “We have to depart on time if we’re going to see the solar rise.”

It was 4 o’clock when that wake-up name got here. We stumbled out of our tent, groggy and irritable, however excited. We climbed atop our camels, clinging tightly to the animals as we plodded additional into the desert in a line of camels, sleepy-eyed vacationers, and Berber guides.

After which we noticed the dawn: that casting away of chilly and darkish and dreariness. Mild tearing by means of the sands. Magnificence and marvel and majesty. The promise of the desert.

In some methods, we’re all in these tents now, chilly however curious, as we wait upon the outskirts of our personal Lenten deserts. That picture of the desert is one we readily attain for as we mirror on these 40 days main as much as Easter. In any case, Jesus spent that very same period of time within the desert. There, he was tempted.

However we all know that temptations come quick and livid, desert or no desert. We don’t must seclude ourselves to expertise what it means to be seduced by the Evil Spirit.

As an alternative, I just like the picture of the desert as one among thriller, promise, and potential. I keep in mind the eagerness with which my spouse and I curled up in our tent, questioning what that second of journey would deliver.

We’d seen loads of films. We’d ridden camels on the zoo. However to enter into the actual expertise of feeling the tough chilly and grains of sand after which witnessing the glimmering solar bouncing off dunes so far as the attention may see was one thing very completely different.

As we stand right here, now, on the cusp of Lent, I’m wondering how we would coax from the embers of our personal religious selves that need to be awed this season. What disposition do we want as we glance out over the dunes on the journey we’re about to undertake because the Individuals of God? What of the actual may we contact by means of our religious disciplines?

We plan to hope, quick, and provides—positive. These are issues we are able to readily see and do. And we must always! However this Lent, my prayer for all of us is that we be struck by God’s goodness, by God’s nice thriller, by Christ glimmering throughout each side of our lives.

I imagine God needs to share that magnificence with us. And so, in the identical means that my spouse and I ready ourselves for an expertise we may solely guess at, allow us to make prepared ourselves for one thing much more awe-inspiring as we put together to embark on our personal Lenten desert journeys.

As a result of camel or no, early wake-up name or no, all of us can have the chance to bop in that wonderful dawn of Easter.

Uncover Ignatian-inspired methods to look at Lent.

Photograph by Mehdi El marouazi on Unsplash.