A New-ish Normal

Faith needs a laboratory, like love needs verbs and hope needs an address!

We live in a world God created but never intended. Brokenness—injustice, tragedy, disease, death—has become our desensitizing normal. What God once called good, we've calloused our hearts to survive.

Easter interrupts this reality with an invitation to be made new. The resurrection isn't a static holiday to commemorate. It's a promise for all people, at all times, to be made new, begin again, continually. Change is possible.

But before there's new life, we need a New Normal.

This Lent, what if your journey wasn't a solo exercise of willpower and good intentions? What if prayer, fasting, and compassion became a shared experiment with your family, friends, or small group? Lent provides a unique 40-day window where Christians can recalibrate their days to re-sensitize their hearts, preparing to live into the promise of resurrection.

Here's the invitation: choose a fast that interrupts your normal spending patterns. Keep a running tally of what you save or earn. As you fast, allow prayer to examine your heart—not to punish yourself, but to reveal what you depend upon instead of God. This is repentance: letting the Spirit shape God's desires in your heart, learning to see others' needs as simply different than your own.

Then comes the beautiful turn. The 50 days of Eastertide transform your fasting into feasting. With money saved, you're sent on mission—not to save anyone necessarily, but to save yourself from believing you deserve what you have. You'll bring encouragement, hope, help, and a little new life to others.

Starting Ash Wednesday, you can sign up for weekly emails with prayer prompts and practical encouragement. A daily prayer guide will help you examine your heart. And by Pentecost, you'll have participated in God’s sending mission to renew and restore—a faith experiment where less becomes more, and resurrection becomes tangible.

Welcome to The New Normal.