Spiritual Formation

My friend Jennifer leaned over my cubicle wall.

“You know when my whole life changed?” she said to me. “When I realized I didn’t have to just bake cookies all the time.”

In the Protestant tradition in which I grew up we did not practice Lent (though many Protestant denominations do), but as an adult I have come to love Lent as my favorite season of the church calendar. Here are 10 reasons why.

I was in sixth grade and living in Saudi Arabia when terrorists bombed the Al Khobar Tower there. I felt the blast shake the neighborhood where I was babysitting at the time. When the smoke cleared from the building, where many kids from my elementary school lived, 19 Americans were dead, and nearly 500 people from many countries were injured.

What if we decided to give Jesus our pain and anxiety rather than trying to carry it ourselves? What if we stopped to listen to others around us who are broken and hurt? What if we stood to advocate for justice when we saw injustice happening? What if we chose to love our neighbors, even when loving looks sacrificial?

Leave it to G. K. Chesterton to write an essay called “In Defence of Baby Worship.”

Black smoke rises from an old apartment building. 

There is a reason why Paul writes about putting on “the whole armor of God” in Ephesians 6:10-18.

In my twenties, I liked a good argument. And I loved to win. 

It used to be that people named their children based on what the name meant. 

“Do you think they know it’s a duplex?”