Today is the first day of Lent. We will be sharing the Lent devotionals with you every week and want to encourage you to find 10 minutes during the day to be still and to listen to the devotional and pray with us. If you are part of a family, gather the family and listen together. After Jesus was baptized, he followed the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. He stayed there for forty days and forty nights, just like Moses on the mountain, Noah in the ark and the Israelites, who spent 40 years wandering in the desert. Like them, Jesus wanted to come close to God. In the wilderness, there is no one and nothing in the desert but God is there. There is not even food. So Jesus fasted. He ate nothing. Not one crumb or bread. Not one grain of salt. And he prayed. Jesus talked to his Father, and he listened, too. But Jesus wasn’t the only one in the wilderness. The devil was there as well. The devil tempted Jesus to eat food just as the serpent tempted Adam and Eve to eat the fruit in the Garden of Eden. And he tempted Jesus to turn away from God. But Jesus didn’t turn away. He didn’t eat like Adam and Eve had done and disobeyed God. Instead, Jesus came close to God. You see, Jesus was getting ready because he knew that when he left the wilderness, he would have big work to do. He would need to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and tell everyone about the kingdom of God. And he also knew that after he did all this, he was going to die. Lent is a season of 40 days leading up to Easter. It starts on Ash Wednesday, which is today and ends on Holy Saturday. Sundays are considered "feast days" when fasts can be broken to celebrate the Sabbath. During these 40 days, Christians all over the world dedicate themselves to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Almsgiving means giving to others. This is done to imitate Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness, where he fasted and was tempted by Satan. Lent is a season for repentance, self-denial, and remembering our mortality. We turn away from our sin, we give something up that we love, like chocolate or coffee or food and we remember that we are people in need of a saviour who gave His life so that we can live.