Come Home to God

Dear Friends,

Today we begin the journey of Lent, and I'm grateful we're walking this path together. Lent doesn't ask us to become someone else – it invites us to come home. To come home to God, and in doing so, to come home to who we already are in God's love.

On Ash Wednesday we hear those words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” At first they can sound heavy, but they're really a gift. They remind us we're limited – that we don't have to carry everything, fix everything, or be everything. In a culture that tells us we should always be stronger, faster, more in control, Lent offers something different. Our limits aren't failures. They're the very places where grace meets us, where pretending falls away, and where we find our way home again.

Many of us live like we're always running, always searching for what will finally make us feel settled or whole. Like that old Jackson Browne song, life can start to feel like we're running on empty – the tank getting low, the road stretching out – and still we keep going because we don't know what else to do. Lent gives us permission to pull over, to stop for a moment, to breathe, and to recognize that what we've been searching for hasn't been far away at all. God has been present all along, waiting – not with judgment, but with welcome – for us to turn and come home.

And what does home feel like? It feels like being known. Like you can finally stop performing. Like the door is open and you don't have to explain yourself to be let in.

This season invites us to notice where we're tired, where we feel distant from ourselves, from others, or from God. And in that noticing, we might begin to see that we're already held. We don't begin Lent by becoming better. We begin with the knowledge that God knows us and has not and will never ever reject us. That’s the most radical thing we could hear – that even now, especially now, we are loved and we belong.

My hope is that this season becomes a time of coming home to God – and as we do, discovering again that God has been walking with us the whole time, even on the roads where we thought we were alone.

May God bless you this Lenten season.

With love and prayers,

Chip