The Voice Before the Desert

In 2014, a twenty-six-year-old physician named Elena Garza finished her residency at Johns Hopkins and volunteered with Doctors Without Borders. Her attending physician, a woman who had mentored her for three years, pulled her aside at the farewell gathering and said simply, "You are exactly the doctor I hoped you would become."

Two weeks later, Elena was in a makeshift clinic outside Juba, South Sudan, treating cholera patients with dwindling supplies, no running water, and temperatures that cracked 110 degrees. She slept on a cot behind a tarp. She lost patients she might have saved with better equipment. She wrote in her journal that some nights she could not stop shaking.

But she also wrote this: "When everything here tells me I am not enough, I hear Dr. Pemberton's voice. She told me who I am before I came to this place. That is what I hold onto."

This is the pattern of Mark 1. At the Jordan River, the heavens tear open and the voice of the Almighty speaks over Jesus: "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased." And then — immediately — the Spirit drives Him into the wilderness. Not after a celebration. Not after a rest. Straight into the wild, among beasts and angels, facing Satan himself.