The Lenten season arrives before spring, just as old man winter begins his few remaining sweeps over the frigid landscape. Many of us enter this season with a heightened sense of our own internal barrenness. We pursue prayer and fasting as we prepare our hearts for the spiritual renewal that will unfold on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Once again, we are made to wait.

We do well to remember the story of Lazarus, who died while his sisters, Mary and Martha, wondered why Jesus had waited until it was too late to heal him. It is not until we hear Jesus’ words to Martha—“I am the resurrection and the life”—that we get an inkling of Jesus’ purpose for their waiting. Lazarus would live again, but it was necessary that he die for Jesus to demonstrate his power over life and death.

Is this not the hope we embrace as we enter the Easter season?

This is my hope for you as you immerse yourself in these timely devotionals—that even if you end another day feeling numb to the lingering effects of winter, you may remember that waiting through the night is the only way to experience the ever-approaching dawn. And not just any dawn. A past and future dawn that will make every dark night worth enduring for the hope that will be revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.

Ronnie Martin is Director of Leader Care & Renewal for Harbor Network, and Pastor-In-Residence at Redeemer Community Church in Bloomington, IN. He has written several books, including In the Morning You Hear My Voice (B&H, 2025), and co-hosts The Heart of Pastoring podcast with Jared C. Wilson.

What if there had only been two fish and one loaf of bread? Could Jesus still have fed the 5,000?

These are the questions my dusty flesh asks on days when I am rundown and out of breath. We know that, yes, of course Jesus could have performed the same miracle with a smaller lunch basket. But so often, deep down, we assume that if the numbers change, there is no longer hope for bread.

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry” (Matt. 4:1–2).

I suppose it is only appropriate that, on a day like Ash Wednesday, we feel our weakness more than usual. My weakness often takes the shape of forgetfulness. I forget that God will sustain me, and so I reach for food as though it is my only source of strength. I check my phone for a brief hit of dopamine. I list off all my worries to my husband in a fit of anxiety, without stopping to take a breath. I assume, wrongly, that I am my own savior or that God’s grace has run out.

Then I remember the Red Sea.

I remember the feeding of the 5,000.

I recall those fluffy wafers that miraculously appeared in the wilderness each morning to sustain the Israelites.

And I think about that time, on the wooden steps outside my apartment, when I cried out for mercy and Jesus met me there. My heart was breaking, but he was catching every tear in his bottle (Ps. 56:8, ESV).

“The tempter came to him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread’ ” (Matt. 4:3).

What happened to Jesus during those 40 days in the wilderness?

We know that Satan waited until Jesus was starving to pounce. But what happened before that? I have so many questions. Did Jesus spend time with the animals, talking to them instead of catching them for supper? Did he, perhaps, pray in the middle of the night, when hunger pains woke him? Did he bathe in rivers, letting the ice-cold water shock his system and distract him, at least momentarily, from his desire for food?

What did Jesus do with his tired, dusty feet on day 38?

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Were these stones bread, I would not cry out to you. I would feast. But in this fast, I see you are my lifeline. I am tempted in this wilderness, but I am not alone. You walked on dry sand, stumbled from fatigue, rumbled from hunger, and still you clung to the truth of your Father. Still you denied Satan the satisfaction of owning you. Surely, through your example and the power of the Holy Ghost, I can press on this day.

“For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14).

Rachel Joy Welcher is a poet, author, and book editor living in South Dakota with her husband, pastor Evan Welcher, and their two children, Hildegaard and Richard.

The Sundays of Lent have traditionally stood apart from other days of this season. While we spend the rest of the week fasting and pondering our mortality, Sunday is different. Sundays are usually feast days, highlighting the coming resurrection—small flashes of worshipful hope along the darker 40-day Lenten road.

Sundays are miniature feasts among the weeks of prolonged fasting because they are the Lord’s Days. As the people of God come into the house of God, they gather around the Word of God and the Lord’s Table. And in the presence of the Bridegroom, the wedding guests cannot fast. But the rest of the week? They remember his death and their own impending demise and return to fasting, awaiting the glorious feast of Easter and the foreshadowed supper of the Lamb. (Yes, yes, Jesus is always with us. But you understand the larger point.)

Initially, this seems like a great deal of trouble. Why have miniature feasts in the midst of such a great fast?

In my estimation, the best answer is not in the church calendar but in our own lives. Life is rarely entirely a fast or a feast. It is instead something far more complex. Even in our darkest seasons, the light occasionally breaks through. Even in our deepest sadness, we experience deep breaths of grace. Life is layered. It is rarely all good or all bad at any given moment. Often, it is instead an ill-distributed mixture of the good and the bad—blessing and stumbling, hurt and healing, profound loneliness and beautiful encounters.

Twenty-five years ago, I discovered I had heart failure caused by a virus. I was 24 years old at the time, a newlywed brimming with optimism. In one single doctor visit, it all seemed to vanish. I was given a grim prognosis—two years of life. My wife of just months was newly pregnant. I was a full-time student. We were poor, and I was dying.

Yet glimpses of hope—often on Sundays—refused to acknowledge my circumstances. We would attend worship, and the beauty of the music in our church would soar, creating something akin to rapturous delight in my soul. We would sit with friends, and I would still find myself laughing at stories and jokes. Family sent gifts, sometimes surprising me with their generosity. Everything within me wanted to retreat into an all-enveloping darkness, but glimmers of grace insisted on brightening things up, forcing me to resist despair.

This is what it means to live, to walk as a child of God in this world. We experience the deepest of pains and greatest of joys. And Jesus is there through it all. He never leaves us. He never forsakes us. He is with us, even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

This is why on the Sundays of Lent, as we prepare to worship the God who never leaves, we set the fasting aside, even if just for a day. How can we fast as we gather with the people of God, those living layered lives like us—a holy recipe of love and loss? How can we fast as we encounter power through prayer, glory in song? How can we fast when we take the broken loaf and shimmering cup, remembering what our God has done? How can we fast as we celebrate the presence of the Bridegroom who never leaves?

We cannot. And so for these Sundays, as we return to the good truth of the gospel even in the midst of longing and hurt, the Bridegroom joins us, embraces us, receives us, and loves us.

And that is an occasion to feast.

Steve Bezner (PhD) is associate professor of pastoral ministry and theology at Truett Seminary at Baylor University and the author of Your Jesus Is Too American. He is heavily involved with GlocalNet and writes regularly on his Substack.

While tackling a recent home repair project, I taught my son how to remove a screw. It’s counterintuitive. You’ve got to push in hard so you don’t strip the screw. You bear down to bring it up; you push in to bring it out. The downward pressure and upward rise are simultaneous and productive.

The Christian life is like that. According to Jesus, the way up is down (Luke 18:14), the path to comfort is mourning (Matt. 5:4), and the means of forgiveness is confession (Luke 11:4). There’s a downward pressure and an upward rise.

When I lead my church family in receiving the Lord’s Supper, I remind them that it’s a paradoxical meal. We shed solemn tears as we confess our sins and grieve Christ’s excruciating death. But because we know that his sacrifice was sufficient payment for our sin (Isa. 53:5), that he died out of love for us (Gal. 2:20), that he was raised on the third day (1 Cor. 15:4), and that he is coming again (1 Cor. 11:26), we celebrate and give thanks. (The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word for “thanksgiving.”) Our sorrow and joy are mingled. We smile through tears. We sob a glad “Hallelujah.” There’s a downward pressure and an upward rise.

Some years ago, my family visited Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. During the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, German snipers rained bullets on Allied soldiers who were wading ashore at several landing sites with nowhere to shelter. Thousands were killed amid terrible carnage. As my family walked along the beach seven decades later, we felt sober awe and earnest gratitude. We were on holy ground. Simultaneously, our time at the beach was sweeter than an ordinary beach day. The sun was brighter, the sky was bluer, and the laughter was more joyful because we knew these gifts were costly. The awesome sacrifice of those heroic soldiers produced in us a mingled sadness and gladness, a downward pressure and an upward rise.

Lent gathers and concentrates our Christian experience. We grieve our sin and Jesus’ suffering. And paradoxically, the grief brings gladness because we know that the suffering Savior saves sinners and that confessed sin is forgiven (1 John 1:9). As Thomas Watson said, “Till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.” There’s a downward pressure and an upward rise.

How shall we express this paradoxical gladness and sadness of Lent? I’ve found some words from Henry Martyn especially helpful here. Martyn was a brilliant scholar at the University of Cambridge who, in 1805 at the age of 24, sailed from England to India as one of the earliest modern missionaries. He died in 1812, having accomplished a staggering amount of Bible translation work in his brief years on the mission field. Martyn once wrote in his journal about a day of prayer: “My soul was soon composed to that devout sobriety, which I knew by its sweetness, to be its proper frame.” That’s a powerful description of Lent, which is a time of sweet seriousness. John Piper expresses the same mingled reality with the phrase “serious joy.”

This Lent, let’s not choose between being glad and being earnest. We were made for both—not sequentially (one, then the other) but simultaneously. Let’s embrace sweet sobriety, holy joy, and glad gravity. God designed us to smile through tears, to weep with joy, to press down and be lifted up.

Stephen Witmer (PhD, University of Cambridge) is the lead pastor of Pepperell Christian Fellowship in Pepperell, Massachusetts, and a Council member of The Gospel Coalition. He is the author of A Big Gospel in Small Places and In All Things Thee to See: A Devotional Guide to Selected Poems of George Herbert.

A childhood friend dies of cancer in his 40s, leaving behind a wife and three children. A minor shoots and kills an 18-year-old in a local library. A newborn of friends remains in the hospital, daily fighting for his life and unable to come home. A fellow pastor laments the weight of leaders in his church serving as first responders to teen gang violence in his small rural town due to insufficient police resources. A longtime friend and Indigenous Bible translator in West Africa grieves his nephews being kidnapped and shot at by jihadists. All of this happened over the course of a couple of weeks.

You have your stories as well. Despair constantly calls for us. Hopelessness is the easiest and most logical posture. The weight of surviving, much less flourishing, in a world where no realm is untouched by the rot and stench of the Fall is overwhelming. What are we to do?

Two responses are the most common to this reality of the human experience. We can either be crushed by the weight of sin and brokenness in the world or hope away despair by isolating and ignoring for fear of being crushed. Neither approach leads to flourishing.

Scripture points us toward a different path.

This path does not run from brokenness but calls it by name. As Christians, we know what was in Genesis 1–2. Our theology provides a depth to lament unavailable outside the Christian worldview. We know what was lost in human sin and rebellion. We know what could have been. Our hearts long for it. To be a Christian is to name the devastating effects of the Fall. We do not call good what God calls evil. Death is evil. Distortion of every sphere of creation is a constant reminder of the reality of our ancestors’ sin and rebellion and our willingness to follow in their footsteps. To ignore this truth is to place a cloak over the biblical story.

Yet we do not lament as those without hope. We traverse the brokenness of our lives and world with the knowledge of the cross and empty tomb 2,000 years ago. Christ was crushed so that we may not be. It is the evidence that God does not turn a blind eye to injustice, ours or others’. The Resurrection is the declaration that death did not hold Jesus because it could not hold Jesus. It is the reversal of the effects of the Fall—the promise of what could be and one day will be with God’s creation.

The resurrection of Christ is the surety of our own future resurrection. This is the argument Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 15. The resurrection of Jesus is the assurance that whatever chapter of despair we may find ourselves in today, it is not the final word.

Paul ends this beautiful chapter with these words: “Stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (v. 58).

What would I tell my kids Paul is saying? Do not fear tears. They are the evidence of knowing the world is not as it should be and the hope of what it shall one day be. Jesus’ resurrection promises this.

Cory Wilson (PhD) is president of Emmaus Theological Seminary and associate professor of global Christianity and intercultural studies.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad” (Matt. 5:11–12).

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2). “But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1 Pet. 4:13).

The command to practice joy in the midst of loss, grief, and hardship often feels impossible to do and heartless to hear. Yet it is found repeatedly throughout the Bible, including in these quotes from Jesus and two of his closest followers, James and Peter. If we found these words tucked away in some obscure place in the Scriptures, they would be easy to ignore.

But far from being a random idea, the theme of finding joy even in grief is arguably at the core of the Christian vision of life. It not only drives the content of much of Jesus’, James’s, and Peter’s teachings; Paul’s life and writings also constantly sing this same tune. Paul speaks of rejoicing in our sufferings (Rom. 5:3; Col. 1:24) and was known as a man of gentleness and joy (2 Cor. 7:4; 1 Thess. 2:7, ESV), though his life was peppered with hardship, loss, and anxiety (2 Cor. 11:23–28).

The paradoxical reality of rejoicing in suffering—an experience that must be felt to be fully understood—is concentrated in the season of Lent. Lent, which the Eastern Orthodox tradition describes as “bright sadness,” leans into the unexpected and seemingly unnatural experience of joy in the midst of grief. Of all the days of Lent, this paradox is foremost on the fourth Sunday, traditionally called Laetare Sunday, based on the sung command “Rejoice!” Laetare Sunday sits exactly at the halfway point between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, and it intentionally punctuates this season of memorial suffering with required rejoicing.

Why? Far from being insensitive to our grief, God knows what he is doing with this Lenten command. In hearing and trying to obey it, we align our hearts to a profound truth: Grief and joy are sisters, not enemies. Loss and delight can live in harmony, and indeed, they give each other life and energy. As Francis Weller astutely notes, to be alive and to love means we will also experience sorrow and loss. “Acknowledging this reality enables us to find our way into the grace that lies hidden in sorrow. We are most alive at the threshold between loss and revelation.”

Jesus models for us a fully human life that denies neither the world’s joys nor its griefs. Jesus both laughed and wept. His teachings are very much concerned with what it means to thrive and flourish and, paradoxically, that flourishing often looks like loss. (See the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3–12.)

So here is the invitation of Laetare Sunday: Open yourself to the griefs and losses that Lent reminds us of. Yet just as much, lean into rejoicing at this mid-Lent point. There is a unique grace we can experience only when we honestly acknowledge our losses, needs, disappointments, and unmet desires yet still look upward and forward to a time of full rejoicing to come. This extended period of Lent helps us pay attention to our griefs. Laetare Sunday reminds us that there is deep joy to be had even now and that these griefs are not the end of our story. Jesus’ suffering will lead to his resurrection, which will lead to ours as well. “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. . . . Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet. 1:6, 8–9).

Jonathan Pennington is a professor of New Testament at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and serves as a teaching pastor and elder at Sojourn East Church. He is the author of many books, including The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, Come and See: The Journey of Knowing God Through Holy Scripture, and Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life.