Day 25 of Lent - Why Do This?

Why choose to show up at the paintbrush and the page day after day, for all 40 days of Lent?

It’s because writers write.

This craft, along with any form of art, is a lifelong pursuit, to the glory of God. In the grand scheme of things, to take 40 days to call myself back to the service of this pursuit is nothing. But the gains have already changed my life!

Any practice that you relentlessly come to, each and every day for 40 days, will change your physiology. It will rewire your brain - for good or for ill, depending on what the practice is. My goal is to make this 40 days of training, this cultivating the delight of picking up the “pen”, my goal is that it become a physical biorhythm that I can begin to take for granted in my life.

The time will come, when I cannot imagine not writing. The time will come when myself and my whole family assumes that I will invest some of the most significant hours of my week at the keyboard.

It is the only way to grow. It is literally the only way to go from mediocre to great.

My answer is not for some publisher to stumble across my blog and give me a book deal. My answer is not to build a bigger and bigger social media platform so that a publisher wants to pimp my platform instead of being moved by the value of my message.

My answer is to face this (new-to-me, beautiful - praise the Lord) Mac screen, and every day to place my fingers on this wireless keyboard, and push big ideas around. My answer is to relentlessly arrange and re-arrange those ideas until the honesty behind them feels brutal, but the end result is beauty.

My answer is to move from words to worship.

Day 24 of Lent - Middle Kindling

“There is a fire in the soul that comes from beyond, and what the soul does in this life is very much driven by that fire.” ~Ronald Rolheiser

For almost every woman I know, there came or comes a Midlife Reckoning. The temptation is to become content with the ebbing embers and not the full fire.

Another common scenario in midlife is to begin to show up in the world with what the Bible calls (in Lev. 10:1) “strange fire”, telling the world that your faith is undergoing “deconstruction”. All the cool people are doing it.

Sadly, older does not equal wiser. Not always.

But there’s still hope! Anyone can reverse course, and find her fire again. Light equals life. Warmth equals comfort. Without fire, all that’s left is anxiety, depression, and loss of purpose. We are made for so much more in our one-and-only midlife season. We were made for GLORY.

And friend, where there is glory, there is fire!

For I, says the Lord,

will be a wall of fire around her, and I will be the GLORY in her middle…

~Zechariah 2: 5

It is possible, as humans, to encounter the fire of God as a lifestyle, and not just a once-or-twice-off experience. A Middle Kindling can be ours - this is so, because the connection forged with the God-man Jesus is real, and He is the one who said:

“I will not

leave you comfortless, I will come to you…”

And come, He did. In the form of tongues of fire that fell on all who were waiting there in that upper room. Say it with me:

“I can and I will receive my very own flame.”

That once-for-all-time sacrifice of Jesus has given us a fiery expectancy that can last a lifetime. It’s wired into your DNA.