Quotes from Alicia Britt Chole

In seasons of hiddenness our sense of value is disrupted, stripped of what "others" affirmed us to be. In this season God intends to give us an unshakable identity in Him, that no amount of adoration nor rejection can alter.

Jesus appears to have walked unstressed and unhurried. His peaceful pace seems to imply that he measured himself not by where he was going and how fast he could get there but by whom he was following and how closely they walked together.

Christian spirituality, the contemplative life, is not about us. It is about God. The great weakness of American spirituality is that it is all about us: fulfilling our potential, getting the blessings of God, expanding our influence, finding our gifts, getting a handle on principles by which we can get an edge over the competition. The more there is of us, the less there is of God. —EUGENE PETERSON

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." —C. S. Lewis (1898–1963)3

Jesus' true strength was not revealed in his ability to teach and lead the multitudes. It was manifested in his willingness to make himself nothing, to suffer, and to die. I had enough strength to exhaust myself studying, mentoring, and teaching, but I did not possess sufficient strength to be nothing.

In these early anonymous seasons, God graciously grants us the opportunity to wrestle with our appetites before other lives are at stake, to struggle with our passions privately before moral collapse affects the innocent publicly.

The purpose of Lent is not to force on us a few formal obligations, but to 'soften' our heart so that it may open itself to the realities of the spirit, to experience the hidden 'thirst and hunger' for communion with God.

Deserts unclutter the soul. The hot desert sun vaporizes all manner of luxuries. Then the cold, shelterless nights expose the essential guts of life. I needed to eat, to sleep, to be protected, and to not be alone. Lent had come half a year early. God asked me to fast mental and physical strength. He invited me into holy weakness. I found Jesus there.

There must have been a problem, we offer. God must have something even better around the corner, we propose. Must He? Here, then is my Lenten plea for the day: let the mourning mourn. Grant those who grieve the dignity to ask questions. Bestow upon the bewildered permission to not edit their honesty. Crucifixion is, after all, serious work.

Jesus lived a truly uncluttered life and died a focused, eternally fruitful death. How I long to follow His example.

Patience grows well in such soil. She is the ally of a soul that makes God its primary pursuit,

Regret empties anticipation, flattens dreams, and suffocates hope, because regret is a form of self-punishment. Whereas hindsight helps us learn from the past, regret beats us up with the past. So for one entire day (or go for forty), I invite you to fast regret. Do not feed it. Do not give it space. Let it go: God's mercies are "new every morning

Regret empties anticipation, flattens dreams, and suffocates hope, because regret is a form of self-punishment. Whereas hindsight helps us learn from the past, regret beats us up with the past. So for one entire day (or go for forty), I invite you to fast regret. Do not feed it. Do not give it space. Let it go: God's mercies are "new every morning" (Lamentations 3:23). And meditate on Jesus' glorious promise from Revelation 21:5: "I am making everything new!

But in anonymous seasons we must hold tightly to the truth that no doubt strengthened Jesus throughout his hidden years: Father God is neither care-less nor cause-less with how he spends our lives. When he calls a soul simultaneously to greatness and obscurity, the fruit—if we wait for it—can change the world.

From John's perspective, the true value of people seeing him was that people would then be positioned to see through him and gaze at Jesus. By

No matter how we rationalize, God will sometimes seem unfair from the perspective of a person trapped in time. . . . Not until history has run its course will we understand how 'all things work together for good.' Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse." — PHILIP YANCEY

On the cross, leadership dies. On the cross, success dies. On the cross, skills die, and excellence dies. All of my strengths—nailed to the cross. All of my weaknesses—nailed to the cross. All of my yearnings for bigger and better, for anything other than Christ himself—nailed to that same cross.

Though in our day we are more than a little obsessed with exact times and sequences, ancient writers were often less linear in worldview and, consequently, actual events were sometimes listed in an order consistent with a theme as opposed to chronologically. Such is the case in the Gospels when Matthew and Mark placed this emotionally charged exchange before Jesus' flogging and John positioned this exchange after the flogging.5

Holy gets angry. So does this mean we need to buy ropes and start making whips? No. But perhaps we need to stop hiding safely behind hashtag campaigns and instead show up and speak out.

No. Our desire to "be like Jesus" contains several exemption clauses, not the least of which are Jesus' hidden years, desert experiences, temptations, tortures, and crucifixion.

What might be the fruit of fasting stinginess? What would happen if our churches fasted spectatorship? What might occur if our families fasted accumulation? What could change if our offices fasted revisionism? What might erupt if a new generation fasted escapism? Such fasts could trigger a spiritual revolution.

Yet somehow Jesus' actions were not matching John's expectations. And that distance between what John thought Jesus would do and what Jesus actually did was straining John's certainty of who Jesus was.

key invitation of our spiritual journeys is to be emotionally honest about our uncertainties. Questions such as the one asked by John are signs of a living, growing, active faith, not evidence of a dying one.

When those pauses extend beyond what we can comprehend or explain (say, for instance, three days), we often spiral into selfdoubt or second-guessing. But in anonymous seasons we must hold tightly to the truth that no doubt strengthened Jesus throughout his hidden years: Father God is neither care-less nor cause-less with how he spends our lives. When he calls a soul simultaneously to greatness and obscurity, the fruit—if we wait for it—can change the world.