Week One: The Threshold

Lent begins before the first step is taken. It finds us at the doorway, in the hush before movement, in the moment before commitment.

To enter Lent is not about feeling ready. It is about showing up as we are—with longing or hesitation, with certainty or uncertainty. It is about pausing at the threshold long enough to name what we carry and what we are willing to lay down.

This week is not about effort. It is about presence. It is about listening at the doorway before we step through.

This is the invitation of the first week of Lent:

• To pause before the journey rushes forward.

• To name what we bring with us—grief, hope, longing, fear.

• To let the season meet us where we are, without demand or pressure.

Week Two: The Wilderness

Lent does not leave us at the threshold. It leads us into the unknown—into the wilderness, where distractions fall away, where silence stretches wide, where we come face to face with what we hunger for most.

This is not a place of exile. It is not punishment. The wilderness is a space of deep reckoning—where illusions fade, where old comforts loosen their hold, where we are invited to trust instead of grasping for control.

To enter the wilderness is not about having answers. It is about allowing the questions to rise. It is about sitting in the hunger, listening in the silence, letting the ache of uncertainty shape us instead of undoing us.

This is the invitation of the second week of Lent:

🔹 To step deeper into the unknown—releasing the need for clear answers.
🔹 To let hunger be a teacher—not just physical, but the longing for something more.
🔹 To listen in silence—not for easy solutions, but for the presence that has always been here.
🔹 To let lament rise—naming what feels heavy, without rushing to resolve it.
🔹 To trust the slow work of transformation—believing that something is shifting, even when we cannot yet see it.

The wilderness does not demand performance. It does not demand certainty.

It only asks that we stay long enough to be changed.

Week Four: The Hearth

Lent slows us down—bringing us not to the height of fire, but to what quietly endures beneath it.

After the wilderness, after the questions, after the breaking open—something remains. Not a blaze, not certainty, but an ember: soft, steady, still alive beneath the ash.

This is the week of The Hearth—the turning point where we no longer strive to prove or produce, but learn to stay. To tend. To keep watch over what still glows.

Faith does not always roar. Sometimes, it flickers. Sometimes, it waits. But even in its quietest form, it is still holy.

This is the invitation of the fourth week of Lent:

• To return gently to what has not gone out—trusting that even a small ember can sustain.

• To let presence, not performance, keep the flame alive.

• To notice what feeds your faith—and what slowly burns it out.

• To tend your faith the way you would tend a fire: with steadiness, care, and attention.

• To remember that you do not keep the fire alone—others are keeping watch with you.

You are not asked to reignite the blaze.
You are asked to stay near the warmth.
This is the week of the hearth.
Let it hold you. Let it teach you. Let it keep what still burns.

Week Five: Can These Bones Live?

Lent brings us to the valley—not the destination, but the reckoning place.

After the wilderness, after the surrender, after the slow tending—
we find ourselves in a quiet field of what has been lost.
Not dramatic. Not loud.
Just dry bones scattered across the ground.

This is the week of The Valley—
the moment we stop trying to move forward
and begin to notice what is still lying in pieces.

Faith does not always feel alive.
Sometimes it feels absent.
Sometimes it feels like memory—distant, brittle, buried beneath the dust.

But even here, God speaks.

This is the invitation of the fifth week of Lent:

To walk gently among what has scattered—without rushing to fix it.
To ask the question we’re afraid to voice: “Can these bones live?”
To trust that being present to what is broken is not failure—it is faith.
To listen for the sound of something stirring, even when breath has not yet come.
To remember that the Spirit still moves—even in the valley, even now.

You are not asked to put yourself back together.
You are asked to stay open—to the ache, to the forming, to the breath that comes when we no longer strive.

This is the week of the valley.
Let it speak. Let it stir. Let it hold what’s true.
You are not alone in this place.
And this—this—is not the end.

Week Six: Before the Cross, A Fragrance That Lingers
Love lingers where death still casts its shadow.

We leave the valley not because it is resolved, but because the story is moving forward.
The bones remain in our memory. The ache remains in our chest.
But something has shifted.

This is the week of anointing—of costly oil and hidden grief,
of footsteps toward a garden, of silence that thickens.

The path is no longer marked by wilderness or hunger.
Now it is marked by proximity—to the cross, to surrender, to love that holds nothing back.

This week, we walk beside the ones who weep while they pour out what cannot be undone.
We pause with Jesus in Bethany, where a woman breaks open her jar,
and everything—every breath, every glance, every act—begins to carry the scent of burial.

This is the invitation of the sixth week of Lent:

To walk slowly into the holy tension between beauty and sorrow.
To notice the weight of what is being given—even when it is not yet taken.
To feel the sacred discomfort of being loved this fully, and not yet knowing what it will cost.
To hold space for grief before the grave.
To remember that love prepares the way, even when we do not understand where it leads.

You are not asked to rush toward resurrection.
You are asked to stay near—to the ache, to the mystery, to the scent that says: He is already being poured out.

This is the week of the fragrance.
Let it linger. Let it mark you. Let it hold what is holy.
You are not alone as the shadows grow long.
And even here—especially here—love is making a way.