Lent

The scripture readings for Lent this year offer us many stories of Jesus encountering people who are seeking: Nicodemus comes to him in the veil of night, he approaches a Samaritan woman at a well, he heals a man born without sight. In these stories, each person is seeking a new beginning, a different life, a deeper faith. What unfolds is an exchange filled with questions and exploration. Often, an unveiling occurs—assumptions are disrupted, a new perspective is revealed, mystery grows.

Like the characters in our Lenten scriptures, we are also seeking many things: clarity, connection, wonder, justice, balance. We are seeking our calling, the sacred, and how to live as a disciple. Throughout the turbulence of the past few years, many of us are asking big questions about our lives and our faith. If you are returning to church, you are probably returning with more questions and a critical lens. We hope this series will help us unpack some of those big questions in ways that are honest and faithful. Throughout this season, we hope you will continually ask yourself: what am I seeking? What is God seeking?

“So often faith is portrayed as something you have or you don’t. You are strong in your faith, or you are knee-deep in doubt. It’s one or the other. This black and white thinking fits with our society’s obsession with choosing sides. However, it doesn’t fit with my experience of faith. For me, faith has always been an experience of seeking—seeking God in the world, seeking the good, seeking a deeper truth. I seek my way through prayer. I seek my way into scripture. I am forever cobbling together memories, feelings, questions, and experiences, all in an effort to see God more clearly. When we studied the scriptures for this season of Lent, I saw that same hungry seeking in the text. Over and over, people ask questions. Jesus asks questions. The crowds ask questions. Everyone seems to be looking for something deeper, and it is that honest curiosity that allows them to run into the Divine. This Lent, I long for that same experience for all of us. So may we be seekers. May we ask questions. May we look for God under every rock and stone. And in the seeking, may we find.”

—Rev. Sarah Speed, Founding Creative Partner, A Sanctified Art

“When I hear the term ‘seeking’ used within a faith context, I automatically think of the famously-quoted adage, ‘Seek and ye shall find’ (Matthew 7:7). This verse is often used to perpetuate a transactional, fairytale faith: if you just try harder or pray harder, then what you want will be granted to you. I wish more than anything that life and faith would operate within a predictable, merit-based system of seeking and finding, asking and receiving. However, you and I both know this isn’t reality. Instead, I hope to live a seeking faith, a faith that is ever-growing, adaptive, resilient, and filled with awe. We are now in the third year of a societal overhaul in which many of our disparities, vulnerabilities, and differences are more exposed. This chapter of life has most likely unearthed big, honest questions—about your purpose, your faith, your identity, your future. And so, this Lent, we invite you to bring those big questions to God. We invite you to engage in the spiritual practice of seeking, staying curious, porous, and malleable. Like Nicodemus, can you let go of what you used to know in order to begin again? Like the Samaritan woman at the well, will you let yourself be fully seen? Like Mary at the empty tomb, can you recognize God’s resurrection when you encounter it?”

—Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity, Founder, Creative Director, A Sanctified Art

“Questions are a sign of growth, curiosity, and wonder. We expect that children as they grow will ask thousands of questions about the world around them, not because they are suspicious of it but because they are drawn to it. Being drawn toward a deeper faith, and toward God at its center, will naturally come with questions, big questions that dwarf our simplistic answers. Many of the college students I’ve pastored come from churches that rush to answer questions quickly and definitively because they are seen as a sign of doubt, which is seen as a sign of lacking faith. But questions are an invitation into deeper faith. They are an invitation for the Spirit to move within the wonder, in the space between the question and the answer. This Lent, let us seek good questions rather than easy answers.”

—Rev. Anna Strickland, Operations Support & Content Creator, A Sanctified Art