Between Ashes & Beauty
// Welcoming the Grace of Biblical Lament Throughout Lent //
We have been living in a heavy season of “in-between” these last few years. Our guess is that you have too? When God created the world, it was perfect and He declared it to be good. Then sin entered the world and everything shattered. Sin marred everything. Out of love for His broken creation, Jesus, Emmanuel, stepped down out of heaven to dwell among us. He lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death and rose to life in victory, conquering death, sin and the grave. One day He will return and the heavens and earth will be made new. He will wipe every tear from our eyes and death and sin will be no more.
Those who are in Christ, are currently living in the tension of ALREADY/NOT YET. Jesus has already redeemed us from sin, shame and death BUT there is a not yet element. We remain in sinful, broken bodies in a broken world. We are not yet home. The new creation has not yet come.
And to be honest, this is a really hard place to dwell. We live in the valley of the IN-BETWEEN: redeemed but not yet restored. We know who God is. We have come to love and trust Him. We know His plans for us are for our good. AND YET. And yet—we still face suffering and ache in our every day. How do we align it all?
What do we do on the mornings when we wake up and everything feels impossibly broken? How do we sit in the tension between what we KNOW to be true and what we are actually FEELING? That middle ground is messy, isn’t it?
Enter the grace of biblical lament.
Over the next seven weeks of Lent, we will be pausing in the messy in-between to welcome the grace of biblical lament into our lives. We will spend time reflecting on the passages of lament in the Bible—pushing our hearts towards hope.
Lent just seems like the right time to admit that everything feels a bit broken. It seems like the perfect time to remind ourselves that while, yes, everything is dark and shattered, IT WILL NOT ALWAYS BE SO.
Join us as we learn to welcome biblical lament into our lives. We pray it stirs up fresh, raw hope within you in the days to come.
🧡 The Restored Home team