The most painful time in my adult life occurred during the year that I walked away from the church.
After a flourishing relationship with Christ and an impressive resume of service to my local church, I woke up one day to realize with fearful clarity that I’d lost something along the way. Something quite important.
I was incredibly fearful I had lost Jesus himself.
I’d gotten so caught up in doing things for Jesus, I neglected to spend time with Jesus.
This was a long, painful journey where I groped around in the dark with my doubts for what had once been mine–the joy of knowing Jesus.
Like a spoon-fed toddler, I could only handle small bits of Scripture. Too often, I equated God and his Word to the hurt I’d experienced and to the stress I’d placed on myself surrounding church.
One small passage that came to me during this time, however, was enough to keep my hope alive. Beautiful, grace-drenched words from Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
This is not what I had been living. Then again, I hadn’t been tarrying with Jesus–I’d been seeking the approval of religious culture. But this invitation to rest in my Savior? I wanted that.
It just so happened that this new calling found me in the season of Lent. And with immense gratitude, I stoked to life the embers of a sacred season laid dormant with my childhood.
In this exploration, I stumbled into a sea of grace contained within the magnificent rhythms of the church year–rhythms that reminded me of the gospel story and God’s immeasurable grace.
Through Scripture, God pushed back the curtain of church hurt and gave me fresh hope. He restored my faith. He compelled me to use my imagination to place myself in the stories in order to better glimpse what God has done and who He is.
The season of Lent helped me recover the intended beauty of the liturgy and of the church. This is a season for repenting. But it’s also a season for remembering. For aligning ourselves with the workings of the Lord. For coming to the one who stepped into our sin, our inadequacies, and our shortcomings. For remembering and then anticipating because we know the amazing splendor of the empty grave is upon us. Death is defeated. Grace sweeps in.
Draw Close to Jesus contains forty stories based on Scripture and historical research. These are fictional narratives based on biblical accounts. I pray these retellings draw you deeper into the Gospel stories but would not replace your time in God’s Word. I pray they stir you to marinate in the Scriptures, to answer Jesus’s call when he says, “Come to me.”
With Hope,
Heidi