Welcome to Tending Joy, a collection of daily devotions for Lent 2024. This devotional resource focuses on joy, which might seem positively un-Lenten at first. Why emphasize joy during a solemn and penitential season?
Lent is more than somber penitence. This year, congregations that use the Revised Common Lectionary spend the Sundays in Lent reading about the covenants that God makes with God’s people throughout history, and those covenants are joyful. God promises Noah and all earthly creatures that God will never again send a flood! God promises Abram and Sarai a child! God shapes a way of life for the Israelites to replace the system of oppression that kept them captive!
Over and over throughout this season, scripture points us toward the deep joy with which God responds to creation, and it invites us to respond to God in turn.
The joy to which God calls us is not one-dimensional. It’s complex and multifaceted, and it reveals itself in many experiences and contexts. If joy was a garden, it would be a raucous congress of wildflowers and carefully cultivated varieties, native and naturalized species alike, a diverse array of colors and textures and smells and shapes that create a single experience together. These devotions will follow scripture’s lead as they explore a different texture and color of joy each week.
Tending Joy: Daily Devotional Guide is part of The Seed of Joy Lent 2024 series, and is copyright © 2023 Barn Geese Worship.