ICYMI: Fast 5 // Fasting from Holding It All Together (Luke 13, 19)
If you missed Sunday's service or could use a refresher, here's a quick recap featuring sharables and takeaways from our gathering. Scroll to the bottom for the full sermon recording.
📖 Focal Scripture
🎯 Reflection
Our culture rewards a tough outer shell. Maybe we fear being taken advantage of, perceived as weak, or abandoned. But we follow a God who weeps. And when we fast from holding it all together and embrace vulnerability, we encounter the God who grieves with us, redeems it, and, like a Mother Hen, gathers us beneath her wings.
🗣️ Key Quotation
“On a note, I write down the name of the person about whom I am so distressed or angry, or describe the situation that is killing me, with which I am so toxically, crazily obsessed, and I fold the note up, stick it in the box and close it… Then I agree to keep my sticky mitts off the spaceship until I hear back.” — Anne Lamott
🙏 Prayer
Gracious God who weeps with us and gathers us like a mother hen, grant us the courage to fast from holding it all together and embrace vulnerability, so that through our cracks, your light may enter and bring healing, for you are our refuge and strength. Amen.
➡️ Next Step
This week, take your next step by fasting from holding it all together. This can look like giving yourself space to grieve all that may be unresolved in you. You can also create what author Anne Lamott calls a God Box. Find an empty box and drop the situations and people you need to release to God. Dig in more here.
