“…but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger…” – 2 Corinthians 6:4-5

I am one of those strange people who love Lent and Holy Week.

Taking on something for Jesus? YES PLEASE!

Giving up something I love to grow closer to Christ? BRING IT!

Depressing readings and tunes from the 17th century written in a minor key? MY FAVORITE!

So, you’re giving up coffee for Lent, Jen? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA… NO. (It’s a safety thing—the safety of those who have to be around me.)

When it comes to how we do Lent in the West, we tend to be pansies compared to our siblings in the East. I keep Lent to Catholic standards as I hang out online with a lot of devout Catholics, and there are a lot of conversations about how “ohmigosh-today-is-Friday-I-have-to-plan-a-meatless-meal.” On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, there might be a conversation about what fasting rules look like, but none of it was impossible to do if one gave it a small amount of forethought.

My Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic friends, however, must give up meat, dairy, fish, oil, and wine in addition to abstaining from eating altogether on some days. I took on my friend Laura’s fast in the Coptic Orthodox Church a few years ago, and we had to modify it before I even started because not eating until noon was going to mess with my blood sugar badly. All I wanted for most of Lent was a freaking “I-really-hope-this-is-tuna” sandwich from Subway, which is usually a Lenten staple for me on Fridays, and to have something other than coconut milk in my coffee! I had to abandon the fast altogether at several points when I got bronchitis and needed some chicken soup.

Am I saying that we should all adopt an Orthodox style fast? Not at all. What I am saying is that we might want to find ways to draw closer to Jesus this Lent that may take us out of our comfort zones a bit. That might look like taking on extra prayer, extra reading, or giving up something you enjoy so that your thoughts about that item are directed toward God instead. You do you.

Gracious God, help us draw closer to you this Lent. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

“For he says, ‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’ See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” – 2 Corinthians 6:2

Something was wrong with my husband. He was getting winded walking up hills in our neighborhood and had stopped doing cardio at the gym. Sometimes he complained of indigestion or pressure in his chest when we were walking, and he looked a little gray. He’d had a physical in May and “everything was fine.” Well, it wasn’t!

In August, after keeping notes about how he felt for two months, he finally contacted our doctor. Two days before her well-deserved sabbatical, she scheduled him for a stress test, which indicated something was definitely wrong with my husband! It took a week to get an appointment with the doctor who was covering for our family doctor. That was possibly the longest and most difficult week of my life. I prayed unceasingly for strength and courage for us both.

Finally, the appointment came on a Tuesday and the whirlwind began. He had a referral to a cardiologist on Wednesday, a heart catheterization on Thursday, and on Friday, emergency open-heart surgery to bypass three arteries including the left main, which was 96% blocked! The left main is often referred to as the widow-maker since a blockage results in immediate death. Unquestionably, something was wrong with my husband!

During his four hours of surgery, I walked, prayed, and texted with prayer warriors who were supporting us both. The surgical team called to let me know when he went onto the heart/lung machine and when he came off. I felt a sense of calm, love, and hopefulness. All was well with my soul.

During his recovery, we were supported by each of our two sons spending a week with us with a one-day celebratory overlap when they both were here. Members of the parish brought food and checked in on us. The surgery was successful, and he worked hard at rehabilitation. Now, thanks be to God, all is well with my soul and my husband.

Thank you, God, for your love and protection for us and those we love. Thank you for prayer warriors, medical professionals, loving children, and caring Christian communities. Thank you for helping us on the day of our salvation. Amen.
-Cathey Frederick

“…but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities…” – 2 Corinthians 6:4

How is my faith holding together, you ask?

Over the past two years, like St. Paul, I have endured “troubles, hardships, and distresses.” I am not the person I was two years ago, for good or for ill. It has been a most trying time, filled with internal and external anxiety.

With the rest of the world, I watched the beating of George Floyd in horror as he called out to his mother. I raged at the killing of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. I made signs and marched—and have been flipped off and yelled at doing so, common decency a fleeting trait in the U.S. today.

I’ve spent sleepless nights worrying over COVID and politics and climate change and what kind of a world we are leaving our grandchildren. And then our grandchildren got COVID.

I’ve received disheartening medical news, been slandered by an old friend, and been criticized for my writing.

Sorrowful, shattered, fragmented, crushed? Yes. More than once, and on different levels.

Yet, no matter what I’ve endured, have I been always rejoicing, as Paul exhorts us to do in this passage?

Here I fall far, far short.

Last week, at St. Philip’s in the Hills in Tucson, Mother Taylor Devine reminded us of this fact. Throughout hardship, we must seek joy, she said. The unfurling of a flower, the sun’s rays on the mountain, a cool glass of water. However small, seek it.

St. Paul says though we may have (or think or feel that we may have) nothing, we yet possess everything in Christ. This is the kernel of truth I cling to as we enter Lent together.

How is your faith holding up?

Dear Lord, be with us day and night, shore us up, remind us to seek joy amid suffering. Amen.
-Ashley Sweeney

Picture this.

Your four year old son dies. Shortly after, a fire happens in your city that ruins you financially as your real estate burns. You somehow keep going, and you make a plan to go to England with your family to help out D.L. Moody with his missionary efforts there. You are delayed with business based on the fire, so you send your wife and daughters over ahead of you… and the ship sinks with your wife as the only survivor. You are dealing with overwhelming loss. How can you say it is “well with your soul”?

This all happened in the matter of a few years to a lawyer and Presbyterian elder named Horatio Spafford. As he passed over the place where the SS Ville du Havre, the ship with his daughters and wife, sank, he penned the words of the hymn. Philip Bliss wrote the tune and called it Ville du Havre.

I first heard this hymn through my college’s chapter of Intervarsity more than 20 years ago. It became a favorite of mine then, and it became my favorite hymn as I battled depression and various types of adversity in my life. It was the lullaby I sang to my son Daniel in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) when my PTSD and postpartum depression lifted enough that I could sing again. When Daniel almost died from a mysterious respiratory virus that landed him on a ventilator a few years later, I sang it to him through tears in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). It remained something I sang to him at bedtime when I was the one trying to get him to sleep as he got older. The hymn reminds me that I will be OK, no matter what life throws at me.

This devotional book is structured the same way previous ones have been. We are giving you an applicable Bible verse, a reflection on that verse, and then a prayer. We also have a playlist of some of our favorite hymns which can be found here.

May you have a blessed Lent.
-Jen McCabe