Like when God spoke the world into being, I want every “Let there be…” spoken over me to be followed by “And it was so.”

In the end, Lenten practices are about releasing what is lesser and opening your hands for a deeper, fuller experience of God’s grace.

At its core, materialism is a soul-cry for belonging. It’s a symptom of a good, God-given desire of our hearts that hasn’t found its fulfillment in Jesus. Sin always seems to work this way. | Lent 2023

God’s power isn’t all seas parting in a matter of hours and death angels passing over in a night. Sometimes it’s forty years of daily manna in the desert. | Lent 2023

In Christ, we have a Companion who has plumbed the depths of disappointment, who can say to our raw hearts, “My child, I know.” | Lent 2023

Are we reaching for the peace of God or the God of Peace? | Lent 2023

A few books and practices that help me enter into this season of preparation with gentleness and an unhurried look at Jesus.

Nurture in me the things that will grow into eternity, that will have a home in the “city you will establish forever.”

Yet this day of ash and repentance and bread and wine speaks to my soul that though I am fatally limited, I am also infinitely loved. And so I bear the ashy cross on my head in humility and sorrow but also in hope, for it is not the dirt that will have the final word, but the precious blood of Christ.

This Epiphany, as we’ve soaked up the stories of the visit of the wise men, Jesus’s presentation at the temple, his baptism, miraculous healings, and his transfiguration, I have been so struck by the tangibility, the physicality of God’s glory and light revealed in Christ. It means something that Jesus has a face with actual eyes that people could actually look into to know that they are loved, safe, valued. And that God-made-man could also receive love from the faces of those who loved him.