The Desert Wilderness of Lent

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It's tempting to see the desert wilderness of Lent as a time of deprivation, but the following passages seem to imply that God sees it differently--as a time of abundance, intimacy--somehow (as in the verses from Hosea) a kind of honeymoon. Not a time of complexity, a season wrapped tightly in rules and regulations,as though God is a Baal (master/taskmaster) but a time of return to simplicity resulting in restored joy: "There she shall sing as in the days of her youth."
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He found him in a desert land,
and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he encircled him, he cared for him,
he kept him as the apple of his eye.
Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
that flutters over its young,
spreading out its wings, catching them,
bearing them on its pinions,
the Lord alone guided him,
no foreign god was with him.
He made him ride on the high places of the land,
and he ate the produce of the field,
and he suckled him with honey out of the rock,
and oil out of the flinty rock.
Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,
with fat of lambs,
rams of Bashan and goats,
with the very finestd of the wheat—
and you drank foaming wine made from the blood of the grape.

Deuteronomy 32


Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
“In that day,” declares the Lord,
“you will call me ‘my husband’;
you will no longer call me ‘my master.’
I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
no longer will their names be invoked.
In that day I will make a covenant for them
with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
I will abolish from the land,
so that all may lie down in safety.
I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you ind righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.
I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will know the Lord...
I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’
I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’;
and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”

Hosea 2

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