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February 22 - April 9, 2023
Jesus fasted omnipresence and clothed Himself with flesh. He fasted being worshiped by angels and accepted the disregard of man. He fasted the Voice that birthed planets and submitted to the silence of thirty hidden years:
It takes a great deal of strength to choose weakness. Jesus chose voluntarily.
To humble us, to test us, to know what is in our hearts . . . such is the sifting power of helplessness. In our daily lives, we may prefer self-reliance. But perhaps utter dependence is the truer friend of our souls.
Helplessness exposed the contents of my heart.
Prior to surgery, God was not absent. The challenge was that self was so very present.
For, in the words of Orthodox Reverend Alexander Schmemann, “The purpose of Lent is not to force on us a few formal obligations, but to ‘soften’ our heart so that it may open itself to the realities of the spirit, to experience the hidden ‘thirst and hunger’ for communion with God.”
“Christian spirituality is not a life project for becoming a better person.” —EUGENE PETERSON
God seems more interested in what we are becoming than in what we are giving up.
Faith, in general, is less about the sacrifice of stuff and more about the surrender of our souls. Lent, in kind, is less about well-mannered denials and more about thinning our lives in order to thicken our communion with God. Decrease is holy only when its destination is love.
I invite you to consider Lent as less of a project and more of a sojourn. A sojourn is a “temporary stay at a place.”4 And a “stay” is about presence, not productivity.
Instead, invest your energy in seeking to remain present to the sacred history of Jesus’ walk to the cross.
“Spiritual disciplines do not transform, they only become relational opportunities to open the heart to the Spirit who transforms.” — JOHN H. COE
Regret empties anticipation, flattens dreams, and suffocates hope, because regret is a form of self-punishment. Whereas hindsight helps us learn from the past, regret beats us up with the past.
Decrease is a spiritual necessity.
By willingly decreasing, John increased others’ view of the Savior.
The key to this fast is redirection, not deflection. Whereas deflection discounts and rejects praise, redirection stewards and then deposits praise at the feet of the One to whom it is due.
A key invitation of our spiritual journeys is to be emotionally honest about our uncertainties.
Questions are as sacred as answers.
We weaken—not strengthen—our faith when we silence sincere questions. Faith in Christ is not an airy substance that rests on unquestioning souls. Biblical faith is muscular, thickened more through trials than ease.
stated, “By doubting we come to inquiry, by inquiry we come to truth.”
Deaths are defining moments in our lives. It serves us poorly to hurry past them.
Instead of speeding past sadness, slow down and be present to your emotions. With Jesus, sit with your sorrow and let loss do its eternal work in your soul.
Fear, by nature, distorts reality.
Revelations are often followed by trials.
Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.” — PHILIP YANCEY1
Uncertainty is quite revealing. The unknown triggers different reactions in different hearts and exposes our souls’ defaults. Ambiguity reveals where we instinctively go to feel the illusion of security again.
Mystery is a given for relationship between the Infinite and the finite.
What we do with our final breaths reflects the values we hold dear in life.
backstories matter little once Jesus enters the room.
Near is the fruit of perseverance, not passivity.
Jesus taught on the power of persistent supplication,
“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.” — MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (1929–1968)
As one modern thinker has noted so eloquently, “To be is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone.”
love does not calculate. What an honor: to be remembered as one who loved lavishly.
Jesus did not let the rejection of tomorrow cause Him to reject the love of today.
With all our inconsistencies, God does not shrink back from us. In turn, may we seek to never shrink back from God.
Actions reveal beliefs because beliefs inspire actions.
Evidently, valuing something more than truth limits our interaction with Jesus.
We can talk all we want, but at the end of the day, we will also be judged by what we did.
holy can feel troubled.
Obedience is not a moment: it is a process connected by countless moments.
A troubled soul is sometimes the signature of obedience-in-the-making.
“There is no one-size-fits-all crucifixion. Jesus said each one of us must pick up our own cross, and pick it up each day. For some, martyrdom might be fame. For some, martyrdom might be anonymity. Regardless of what it is, first followers ask daily, ‘Lord, what is my cross today, and where shall I carry it?’ ” — LEONARD SWEET2
Cross-ward is a commitment that passion may make but that only love can keep.
The cross is a call not to forget our own names but to live and die for the Name of Another.
The cross is a call to renounce self-direction and shift leadership loyalties from our selves to our Savior.
Every chance to fast has a multitude of spiritual benefits, but is not a burden against Christ’s law of grace. You do not incur a sin guilt or debt by not fasting, but you miss out on a sweet gift of the Holy Spirit to the church that is meant for your inner health.”
“There are two absences of God. One is the absence that condemns us, the other is the absence that sanctifies us. In the absence that is condemnation, God ‘knows us not’ because we have put some other god in His place, and refuse to be known by Him. In the absence that sanctifies, God empties the soul of every image that might become an idol and of every concern that might stand between our face and His.” —THOMAS MERTON (1915–1968)
We know that Jesus’ presence is valuable to us, but we rarely consider the possibility that our presence is valuable to Him.
Cease determining the value of your reality by your perceptions of others’ reality.
