40 Days of WHAT?

When our third daughter was in kindergarten, her friends often would get off the bus with her at noon and have lunch at our house.  One spring day when our five-year-old neighbor Grant joined her for his favorite peanut butter sandwich, the two of them asked me to read them a story.  The Beginner’s Bible was sitting on the couch, so I began to read them the Easter story. 

At one point, Grant jumped up and exclaimed, “I had NO idea Jesus had anything to do with Easter!”

Lent precedes Easter as advent precedes the Nativity, a time of getting ready for what is coming, not just to decorate with bunnies and chocolate eggs, but preparing our hearts.  Lent is the fast before the feast. And empowers us to show up differently to the Easter celebration.  Not going through religious motions, but moving spiritually toward a deeper understanding of who Jesus is and what He has done. 

The question perhaps is not what are you giving up for Lent?  But what is God forming in me through this?

Lent is commonly known as a season of abstaining, when indeed it is the opposite. It enriches.

“Christians have always looked to suffering not only as a place of pain, but as a place of meeting God.  Suffering does not merely happen to us.  It works in us,” states Tish Harrison Warren in her book Prayer In The Night.

What if for Lent we fast or give up, not something we like or dislike, but something that has a strong hold on us?  What if for 40 days we gave up anxiety and fear?  What if we obeyed God’s most repeated commandment, Fear not. I am with you. Be anxious for nothing. What if I fast from those things?

Oh, I can come up with a long list of excuses not to.  But I need to realize that anxiety and fear are not my friends.  They are not welcome here.  And they keep me from trusting God.

Ann Voskamp writes in her book The Broken Way,  “I don’t know how to smooth out angst or stress or worry, but I know you either leave your worries with God … or your worries will make you leave God.”

But if I decide to refrain/give up/relinquish anxiety and fear for Lent, what do I replace it with?  That dynamic duo is firmly lodged in my practices and won’t easily let go.

I know, because Ash Wednesday night – the beginning of Lent --, I didn’t sleep well at all.  I woke up in the middle of the night and whoa! Name the fear or anxiety as they opened the door for a wild party and invited the whole gang. It was a raucous family reunion.

But if anxiety and fear are surgically removed with great intention on our part, the vacuum it creates, the gaping space as it leaves, just invites in more of their cousins.  If we do not choose to trust God in our circumstances, other little-g gods gladly rush in to take God’s rightful place.

Lent is the perfect opportunity to change our defaults.  God enters in. And helps us to not just think with another perspective, but be changed by it.

Is it anxiety – or just urgency to pray? If I didn’t worry, would I pray as much? Or would I pray differently?

What have we attached ourselves to instead of trusting God?  He whispers to us another way through our difficulties and concerns, “Try this instead.”

And as the fog gradually lifts, we can discern perhaps the first vestiges of healing and the 2 x 4’s of restoration beginning to be revealed.

If we ignore the season of Lent, does Easter just become another weekend or an excuse to get together for a meal with friends and family and eat chocolate?  Worship is often just a side dish, if time for it at all.

In the church liturgical calendar, Lent lies outside “ordinary time.”  We come before Him at Lent not that God would remember us, see us, listen to us, or that we would somehow pay for or make up for our sin, but that we would remember Him, see Him in the ordinary and extraordinary, respond to Him, and believe in Him beyond a reasonable doubt.  In our pain, we cry out, “O God, do something supernatural.” And God replies, “I am!”

In Lent, we are not giving up anything, but giving and receiving.   It is a kind of worship that changes us. We are not paying for our sin in preparation for Easter.  Jesus already did that. But we remember His sacrifice for us.  Because without Good Friday, there is no Easter.

We drag our sins to the altar, and realize Jesus is already there.  That is why He came. Lent helps us remember that, like climbing a steep hill and discovering that we can see into eternity as a result. The hardship we did not expect turns into a surprising blessing we would never turn away.

What does Lent make possible?  If we don’t try, we will never know.

Where Resolutions Go To Die

Two years ago, I made no resolutions.  I had no intention of adding to an already endless catalog of what I needed to do in the next twelve months. But instead I sought to focus on being, how to go forth, not encumbered by a well-meaning, check-it-off to-do list, but how I wanted to be.  Not making it to the third week of January where resolutions go to die, but being changed in increments all the way through the year.

What is God forming in me through this?

Instead of resolutions, I wrote down ten directives to focus my eyes and my heart.  I attached a scripture verse to each one just to keep me in the right lane and bring the name of Jesus in how to live, breathe, and have my being. Acts 17. 28   Degree by degree, it began changing how I responded, my thoughts, prayers, pursuits, and my entire year – and then spilled over into the next.  And made me a little bit different than the year before, and sometimes even the day before. I have a long way to go. 

In all of us, gradually and surprisingly, God weaves His transformation into the very fabric of our being and radically alters those things we do.  We are able to approach, respond and navigate the swamps and boulder fields differently because we have focused on Him.  Being precedes the doing, not the other way around.

Doing something may emerge out of all of this.  But there is a distinct difference by focusing on who we are becoming and how we are growing.  May we be at the end of this year – or even the mere closing of this day -- more like Jesus.  And that exceeds everything else.

Because transformation doesn’t just land on our doorstep like a two-hour Amazon order, even a singular act of obedience leads us ever deeper into the slow work of God on our souls.

He opened a door previously unimaginable, wrote Jean Fleming in her book Pursue The Intentional Life.  Following God will do that to us, seeing portals and paths and opportunities we have never realized before. And meeting Him there.

These on-going reminders are taped to a cabinet in my closet – in plain view.  Because I’m still working on them.  And God is still working on me.  He’s not done with me yet. 

 

·       Pay attention.  …to have the mind of Christ.  1 Corinthians 2. 16

·       Write something, read something, run something every day.  Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.  Ecclesiastes 9. 10

·       Weave kindness in my words.  …that I may show the kindness of God to him. 2 Samuel 9.3

·       Don’t interrupt.  …slow to speak. James 1. 19

·       Do small things well.  Do not despise the day of small things. Zechariah 4. 10

·       Listen.  Really listen to others and to God.  ….listen to Me.  Blessed are those who keep My ways.  Proverbs 8. 32

·       Be present.  Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.  1 Thessalonians 5. 11

·       Reinvent.  Reinvest.  Recreate.  Redeem.  Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it.  Proverbs 3. 27

·       Ask questions.  Lots of questions. …Jesus spoke to him first, saying, “What do you think?”  Matthew 17. 25

·       Be gentle.  Let your gentleness be evident to all.  Philippians 4. 5  A soft answer turns away wrath.  Proverbs 15. 1

 

My list will not resemble yours.

But our dissimilar intentions are rooted in the same Love that draws, a Voice that calls, as T. S. Eliot penned in his poem Four Quartets.

It is not about being a “better person” by the end of the year, but being a radically different one, living out what we really believe and welcoming the Holy Spirit to rearrange the furniture and build something new in us.

Throughout time, people have wondered and even been obsessed by, “What should I do?”

What if we instead asked who do I want to be?  Not recognized by what we do, but known by Him and known as His, seeking to live a faithful life, every sacred step on this holy ground of our lives.

What We Cannot Know

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He had no idea what he did.

This afternoon, Robert Wolgemuth is being laid to rest, having died rather suddenly of pneumonia that just wouldn't let go.  I haven't seen or talked to him in decades.  The obituary of this faithful man stated his recognizable and notable achievements of which there were many, but those tributes never tell the whole story.

When we met, Bob, as he was known then, had just graduated from college.  He was starting a chapter of Campus Life youth ministry at my high school.  In the course of his career, that ministry appeared to be just a short-lived blip -- but those are the moments that do not just prepare us for what is to come, but even how God uses us in what is now.  Faithfulness to God goes way back.

One evening when the youth meeting was over, Bob had no idea that the words he said to me were going to be so sticky. I didn't realize it at the time either. We rarely do.  But well-placed words and sacred encounters don't just come to the surface of our thoughts every now and then, but follow us around for a long time.  Those words are sometimes what we need to carry with us.  Sometimes we don't even know that we need them.  Or need them right now.

I was the shy girl on the edge of the crowd.  Most of the time I held a small notebook that I brought to the meetings, in case I wanted to write something down.  He noticed.  And one week asked if he could read some of my writings.  Reluctantly, I let him borrow my notebook.  The next week when he handed it back to me, I expected him to repeat what others had said in condescending tones, "Oh, that was really good," as if I was a kindergartner who drew a picture of purple and orange stick figures.  

But he didn't.  He said, "I hope you didn't mind that I copied down some of your poems." 

His words stuck.  They encouraged that timid 14-year-old to keep on writing.  They still do.

Who are the people who have influenced us most?  Not the ones who thought they did, but those without the slightest notion of their impact, those who radiated the unconscious loveliness of the Lord's touch.      ---Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest 

God places each of us daily in divine appointments to encourage others and love them to Him.  God's faithfulness changes the course of lives every day.  One unforgettable word at a time.

It's our turn. 

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.  Proverbs 25. 11

 

Of The Making Of Many Books, There Is No End: My 2025 Chronicle of Books

One of my first memories as a little girl was getting my very first library card.  I didn't have to prove I could read, but just that I could scribble my name. I practiced for weeks.  I couldn't wait.  The library was a wonder to me.  All those books for the taking.  And reading. And reading again.  Mom limited how many books I could check out. And often hid them from me at home. My foremost rebellion as a child was reading with a flashlight under the covers.

You're going to ruin your eyes!  Mom warned me over and over.  I thought it was worth the risk. 

The library is still a remarkable, splendid and moveable feast to me. 

One of my favorite books of 2025 was Theo of Golden, a self-published paperback novel that literally took the publishing world by surprise this year.  It was written by near-70 year old first-time novelist Allen Levi who lives by himself in rural Georgia. He never even intended for it to be published.  That would have been a shame.  Even as I write this post, the Nashville library alone owns 42 copies of the physical book with 334 people on the wait list.  There are 123 copies of the e-book with an astonishing 771 people on the wait list. And that is just Nashville. It ranks at the top of my list this year.  A gem of a story.

Of the making of many books, there is no end, the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 12. 12.  I am grateful to God for the creativity of those who are faithful to their calling. 

I did not read as many books this year, but I discovered new authors and savored their words. My new favorite novelist is Niall Williams, an amazing Irish writer.

Here's my 2025 list with a few annotations from my favorites: 

Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway by Stephanie Duncan Smith (2024)

Table for Two by Amor Towles (2024)

Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much: The Way of Love in a World of Hurt by Andi Ashworth and Charlie Peacock (2024) No one gets to adulthood without a past....be on the lookout for redemption. It comes in waves.....In essence, I was training for a work I could not yet see or know.

A Shepherd Looks At Psalm 23 by Phillip Keller (1970)

The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis (1954)  He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.  

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller (2012)

Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago by Kerry Egan (2004)

Foster by Claire Keegan (2010)

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi (2023)  ...for helping people see themselves for who they really are.

Stories of the Saints: Bold and Inspiring Tales of Adventure, Grace, and Courage by Carey Wallace (2020)

Time of the Child by Niall Williams (2024)  But storytellers skip the everyday, mistaking the ordinary for the dull, seizing on the sensational and leaving out the habitual that is in fact the fabric of life.

The Reading Life by C. S. Lewis (2019)   As we read we find ourselves sharing their burden;  when we have finished, we return to our own life, not relaxed but fortified.  [Fellowship of the Ring]

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa (2017)

Bel Canto: The Annotated Edition by Ann Patchett (2001, 2024)

Tinkers by Paul Harding (2009)

The Hospitality of Need by Kevan Chandler and Tommy Shelton (2025)  It's not just people saying yes to my need, but me saying yes to their participation.       

As It Is In Heaven by Niall Williams (1999) When something of great size moves into the heart, it dislodges all else.

Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams (1997)

You Have A Calling:  Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good and Beautiful by Karen Swallow Prior (2025)   What if your calling isn’t what you get paid to do?  What if it is?  What if your calling isn’t something you feel passionate about every day – or even most days?.... What if a calling isn’t just about what you do but how you do it? What if it isn’t just about doing a certain thing but also about being a certain way?

Little Shrew by Akiko Miyakoshi (2024)

An Axe For The Frozen Sea by Ben Palpant (2025)

October, October by Katya Balen (2020)

The Teacher of Nomad Land  by Daniel Nayeri (2025)  And because He has freely given these things I do not deserve, then I can freely share with you......Did God give you to us, or did He give us to you?.....Only love lets us forgive the inconvenience of other people. 

 Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story by Wendell Berry (2025)

Living in the Present with John Prine by Tom Piazza (2025)  John’s show wasn’t good because his vocal intonation was perfect, or his guitar technique was perfect, or his guitar was perfectly in tune, or because he was making no mistakes…Quite the contrary!  But it didn’t matter.  Because his ability to deliver the rest of it – the emotional part – was so in the stratosphere that none of that mattered. 

Stewards of Eden: What Scripture Says About The Environment and Why It Matters by Sandra Richter (2020)

Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley (2015)

My Dear Hemlock by Tilly Dillehay (2024)

The Happiness Files:  Insights on Work and Life by Arthur C. Brooks (2021-2024)

The True Gift by Patricia MacLachlan (2009)

 Letters From Father Christmas 1920-1943 by J. R. R Tolkien (1976)

My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers (1935)

An Incremental Life by Luci Shaw (2025)  Never give up on the grace of God.

Just Like That by Gary D. Schmidt (2021)   Bless us in the unexpected.....She’s not going to have a new start, thought Meryl Lee. There is no new start.  There’s only what’s next.

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day By Day by Peter Scazzero (2008)

Bread of Life: Savoring the All-Satisfying Goodness of Jesus Through The Art of Bread Making by Abigail Dodds (2021)  She knows the two most important things:  she is in need of help, and He is able to give it........Knowing there is a purpose behind the pressing down and rolling out can change our experience of the pain.....We need the Word. We need the people of the Word.

Humans Of New York by Brandon Stanton (2013)

History of the Rain by Niall Williams (2014)

The Bible  Never underestimate the power of God's Word.  Of all the books I read every year, the Bible continues to change the course of my life.  From my own reading, I post a daily scripture verse in my blog www.worddujour.blogspot.com  Don't go into the day hungry for God's Word. 

 

Certainly Not What We Expected

This year unfolded not as I anticipated, but I was assured that God was there every step.  Even in the struggles, I could hear my grandmother's words from when I was a little girl, "Sometimes we just have to trust the Lord in that." Many experiences emerged seemingly out of nowhere, ambushes along the way, but also joys woven in unexpected places.  I just needed to walk with Him all the way through.

And still walking through.

God reminds me that while we calculate according to a twelve-month calendar, He exceeds time in a way we cannot comprehend.  And nothing takes Him by surprise.  God is not a variable.  He is the constant in the equation of our lives.

In His sight, this year is not over.  It is not yet complete.  He whispers to us, "Not done yet." It takes eternity for that. A lot more is yet to come. 

As Oswald Chambers says in his devotional My Utmost for His Highest, "All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God."

We can go forth into the new year, but differently.  In all our experiences, even the difficult ones, God has been equipping and preparing us through the twelve months that we have just emerged from. What has God been trying to make me aware of?  What was God forming in me through this?  We are all different today than a year ago.  We see circumstances differently-- even what is yet to come, even what we do not anticipate --because we see God differently.  We have changed in so many ways from where we stood and the terrain we traveled through this past year.  

It is not just the turning of a new year, but facing each new day, filled with the unexpected.  Even more so, we recognize our need to walk with Him both in the joy and strength of His Presence.

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with them.  He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God himself with be with them as their God......"Behold, I am making all things new."  Revelation 21. 3-5. 

We go forth not fearfully stumbling into the unknown, but dwelling with Him.

And that makes all the difference. We are not impervious to circumstances, but fully responsive within them.  And never alone.  Do not fear.  I am with you.  His faithfulness covers us.

What does this make possible?  

"Often, when we observe from a distance, we misinterpret.  Look up at the night sky and you will see much darkness.  But train a telescope on the blackest patch, and a million galaxies explode into view." (Rebecca McLaughlin, Confronting Christianity) 

God says, "Now watch this."