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Sterling Severns Devotional, Devotionals, Lenten Devotion

Relapses into Wonder

March 11, 2025 (Day 6, pages 33–40)

Relapses into Wonder

They settle in, hands resting gently in their laps, seated in a semi-circle.

“I wonder what part of this story is just for you today?”

They lean in.

“I wonder where you see yourself in this story?”

They listen.

“I wonder what happens next?”

They pause.

“I wonder what this story tells us about God?”

The storyteller doesn’t rush to explain. Silence is given room to breathe. The story lingers, settling into their hearts. The invitation isn’t to recite what they’ve learned—it’s to listen, to notice, to wonder.

Maybe, if they sit in the quiet long enough, they’ll hear something deeper. A voice. A presence. A melody playing just beneath the surface.

For years, Godly Play shaped the way we engaged sacred stories with our children, not as lessons to be mastered but as invitations into something deeper.

Jesus once said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3

“The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”

— G.K. Chesterton

Somewhere along the way, we stopped playing. We stopped wondering. We started reaching for certainty, mistaking explanations for faith.

Josh Nadeau writes about this too—the slow erosion of wonder. About how, somewhere between childhood and adulthood, the magic goes quiet. The world gets loud, and the hunger for something more gets buried beneath routines, responsibilities, and survival. He confesses how he learned to settle—how he numbed himself rather than risk being awake.

And yet, even after all that, the wonder isn’t gone. It waits. The music has never stopped playing.

So today, let’s not rush to explain or analyze. Let’s sit with the questions. Let’s practice wonder.

I Wonder…

  • I wonder when I started settling for answers instead of questions?
  • I wonder what I’ve been avoiding that’s actually an invitation?
  • I wonder how much of my life has been shaped by fear rather than love?
  • I wonder where I’ve mistaken certainty for faith?
  • I wonder what, or who, awaits when I stop running?
  • I wonder if I’ve mistaken comfort for peace?
  • I wonder what part of me I’ve lost that God is trying to restore?
  • I wonder what grace would feel like if I actually let myself receive it?
  • I wonder what God is doing in the places I least expect?
  • I wonder if I’m awakening to something new?

_______________________________________________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Join the journey & access the reading calendar

More about Room for Good Things to Run Wild

Sterling Severns Devotional, Devotionals, Lenten Devotion

Open Self-Surgery

March 12, 2025 (Day 7, pages 41–45)

The wilderness has always been part of the journey. The Israelites wandered in it. Jesus was led into it. And again and again, we find ourselves there too.

The wilderness wakes us up to the truth: the things we relied on can no longer hold us. But it’s also where we come undone, where we feel lost, where we grasp for what’s familiar—even if what’s familiar was destroying us.

Nadeau describes his own moment of reckoning—the choice to leave behind what was numbing him, knowing it would force him to face what came next.

“I left the bank so I could stop drinking. But then there was the wilderness.”

It’s one thing to step away from what numbs us. It’s another to face what surfaces in its absence.

Facing Ourselves in the Wilderness

It’s easy to think of wilderness as a single, defined season—forty years for Israel, forty days for Jesus. A moment to endure before moving on.

But if we’re honest, wilderness is never just once.

The Israelites returned to it again and again. The disciples faced it after Jesus’ death. The early church walked through it as they stepped into an unfamiliar world. Wilderness isn’t a detour in the spiritual life—it’s a place we return to.

Lent comes around, year after year—forty days, again and again, pulling us back into the wilderness.

We know this, too.

There’s the wilderness of early adulthood, when we leave behind what’s familiar but don’t yet know who we are. The wilderness of grief, when life no longer makes sense, and we can’t go back to what was. The wilderness of doubt, when the faith we inherited no longer holds, and we’re left searching for something truer. The wilderness of loss, transition, failure—threshold moments between what was and what will be.

Wilderness often marks a threshold. It strips away illusions, leaving us to wrestle with the question: Who am I, really?

The Ache for Home

The wilderness exposes our deepest longing—the ache to be whole, to be at rest, to be at peace.

We spend so much of our lives striving, proving, holding everything together, afraid of what will happen if we stop. But in the wilderness, there is no more hiding. No more distractions. No more escape.

Just the truth of where we are.

And in the stillness, God meets us there.

Again and again, God meets people in the wilderness—Hagar, Jacob, Elijah, the Israelites, the disciples. Again and again, God meets us there. Not once we’ve found our way out, but right there in the middle of it.

And beneath all the striving, beneath all the fear, beneath all the noise—there it is. The longing we’ve been trying to outrun.

“And, oh God, I just want to go Home.”

I Wonder…

I wonder what I’ve been avoiding that the wilderness is trying to show me?

I wonder where I’m resisting change because I fear what comes next?

I wonder if I’ve mistaken control for security?

I wonder how I might recognize growth in my faith as I walk through the wilderness again and again?

I wonder what it would feel like to trust that God meets me here?

_____________________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here.

More about the book and author.

Sterling Severns Devotional, Devotionals, Lenten Devotion

The Mechanics of Everyday Sainthood

Today’s Lenten Reading: March 10, 2025 (Day 5, pages 27-32)

Some lessons can only be learned by doing—taking the hits and showing up again anyway.

“This is the path for all of us,” Nadeau writes. “It’s not just boxing; it’s all kinds of things. It’s dancing, it’s painting, it’s plumbing. It’s pregnancy and childbirth. It’s fatherhood. It’s being a true friend. It’s learning that to develop real skill or strength in life, to grow and change, we need to admit our weaknesses and face them.”

We don’t get to skip the hard parts. We don’t get to bypass the struggle. Saints aren’t made by avoiding pain but by pressing into it, by letting it shape us instead of destroy us.

We don’t walk this road alone. We stumble forward together, side by side, sometimes carrying each other, sometimes just keeping pace—reminding one another that nothing, not even this, can separate us from the love that holds us.

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 8:38-39

Things can always be redeemed.

_____________________________________________________________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau.

No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here:

An Invitation to Reflect: A Lenten Journey Together

Information about the book and author of Room for Good Things to Run Wild: How Ordinary People Become Everyday Saints

#Lent2025 #LentenJourney #ThingsCanBeRedeemed

Sterling Severns Devotional, Devotionals, Lenten Devotion, Life of the Community

Who Shows Us the Way?

Today’s Lenten Reading

March 7, 2025 (Day 3, pages 18–19)

Who Shows Us the Way?

A few years ago, a friend and I were talking about faith—what it means to keep going when so much was unraveling.

His voice got quiet, and he said, “I need elders in my life.”

Something in me opened as he said it—like hearing the faintest notes of a song I’d forgotten. He was naming something I needed, something I longed for.

But what unsettled me most was this: others were looking to me to be an elder.

I was helping usher others through their crisis of identity while in the midst of my own.

Then Came the Wave

The kind that unsettles everything, that pulls you under.

These moments return, stripping away what cannot hold—making space for something deeper.

Failure itself becomes the invitation.

What Holds?

The truth is, anything we build our lives on—self-sufficiency, institutions, even other people—will shift beneath us.

And when it felt like everything was giving way, I wasn’t left with answers.

I was left with silence.

But the silence wasn’t empty.

It held something I had forgotten.

Everyday Saints and Struggling Well

Josh Nadeau writes about heroes—but not in the way we usually think of them.

Not those who have mastered life, but those who have lived it in a way that calls something deeper out of us.

The same is true of how he speaks about saints.

Not distant, untouchable figures, but ordinary people whose lives reveal something holy.

I keep coming back to the idea of struggling well.

Not avoiding hardship. Not numbing it.

But moving through it with faithfulness, with honesty, with an openness to what might be revealed.

This is what elders, sponsors, and everyday saints do.

They don’t hand us easy answers, but they show us what faithfulness looks like in the questions.

And this is why we need them—not just once, but again and again, at every major crossroads.

Sponsors need sponsors.
Elders need elders.
Disciples need disciples.

Lent Isn’t About Rushing to Transformation

It’s about what happens when the running stops.

It’s about sitting in the silence long enough to realize we are not alone.

It’s about noticing what is real—not forcing change, but allowing something to surface.

It’s about learning not to escape Sheol, but to listen there.

What’s Crumbling—And What’s Being Renewed?

The structures that once upheld the church’s power have crumbled.

And whereas it doesn’t feel very good, that doesn’t mean it isn’t.

The houses of faith we’ve built are crumbling because that’s what happens when we build on what cannot hold.

When we build on power instead of presence, on status instead of faithfulness.

But Jesus builds the church. We make disciples.

And in place of what has fallen, a familiar way is being renewed—one that can withstand the weight of love, truth, and grace (Matthew 7:24-27).

And we don’t find our way alone.

The People Who Show Us the Way

The voices of elders—both living and gone—help lay the foundation.

Cecil and Charlotte are just two among a long line of the great cloud of witnesses, guiding me in ways they’ll never know.

I think of Boyle, Nouwen, Palmer, Brooks, Buechner, Colbert, Lamott, Brown-Taylor, McLaren, Rohr, Friedman, Kaur, Thurman, Willard, Weller, and so many others—voices I encounter in books, in podcasts, in stories passed down. Their wisdom steadies me.

But more than anything, we need people we make eye contact with, people we walk alongside. In their eyes, we see recognition—the quiet knowing of someone who has been here before. We see steadiness, not because they have all the answers, but because they’ve learned they don’t need them.

We see grace. We see the way forward.

And the pattern continues.

Sponsors need sponsors.
Elders need elders.
Disciples need disciples.

Those who guide us are also being guided.

Those who pour into us are also being poured into.

This is the way wisdom moves, the way faith is formed—not in isolation, but in relationship.

We need those we can trust—who remind us, again and again, that grace is real.

Who are the voices shaping you?

A Question for Reflection

Who are the voices shaping you?

Who are the everyday saints pointing you toward life?

Lent is a season of remembering. A season of learning how to let go, how to be held, how to be raised into something new.

It is not a season of escape, but of transformation.

And somewhere along the way, in the silence, in the stillness, in the presence of those who have walked before me and those who walk alongside me now—

I rediscovered my faith in Jesus.

Maybe we don’t need all the answers.

Maybe we just need to pay attention to those who are showing us the way.

__________________________________________________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau.

No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.

You can keep your reflections private, or if you feel compelled to share, there will be a few simple ways to do so online.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here:
https://www.tbcrichmond.org/an-invitation-to-reflect-a-lenten-journey-together/

Information about the book and author of Room for Good Things to Run Wild:
https://a.co/d/45D382Y

#Lent2025 #LentenJourney #EverydaySaints #StrugglingWell

Sterling Severns Devotional, Lent, Lenten Devotion

The Ache for More

March 6, 2025 Day 2, pages 11–18

Josh Nadeau describes the slow unraveling of certainty, the moment when the stories we’ve been told no longer seem to hold. The aching sense that something is missing, that we are meant for more—but what? And how do we get there?

Enter hypocrisy. Pretending. Performing. Playing the part we think will get us to transformation. But, as Nadeau writes, “hypocrisy reaps no rewards.” Because deep down, we know. Something isn’t right. Maybe you’ve felt it—the unease of going through the motions, of doing everything “right” but still feeling hollow. Maybe you’ve feared that if you stop pretending, you’ll be left with nothing at all. 

But here’s the thing: That ache, the longing, for more is not failure. It’s invitation. An invitation to step out of the scripts we’ve been given. To stop pretending. To wake up. To move forward, out out Sheol (rock bottom). 

Jesus once said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

John 10:10

Not the life of performance. Not the life of pretending. Real life. Lent is a season for naming the ache—for sitting with it, instead of numbing it. It’s a time to be honest, to stop bluffing our way through, and to trust that there is something on the other side of our honesty. What happens when we stop pretending? Maybe, just maybe, that’s where life begins.

________________________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you. You can keep your reflections private, or if you feel compelled to share, there will be a few simple ways to do so online.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here:
https://www.tbcrichmond.org/an-invitation-to-reflect-a-lenten-journey-together/

Information about the book and author of Room for Good Things to Run Wild:
https://a.co/d/45D382Y

#Lent2025 #LentenJourney #TheAcheForMore #StopPretending

Sterling Severns Devotionals, Lent, Rule of Life, Rule of Life Together

Where Can I Go That I Can’t Find Me?

March 5, 2025 Day 1, pages 1–10)

There comes a point when the running stops—not because we’ve figured things out, but because we’re too exhausted, too exasperated, too worried, to keep going. The distractions don’t work anymore. The noise dies down. The silence overwhelms. And there we are.

I can think of multiple times in my life when I’ve found myself in Sheol—that ancient word for the place of the dead, a place of silence, distance, and unknowing. A place that felt like deep absence. And while I may not know exactly what the psalmist envisioned, I know what it is to feel like I am there. Hitting bottom. The pit. The place where you stare at the ceiling at 2 a.m., wondering how you got here.

And if what those further along on this journey—the everyday saints who have walked this road before—say is true, I have every reason to believe I’ll find myself there again. The same is true for you, just as it has been—and will be—for all of us.

And every reason to believe God will meet us there also.

Josh Nadeau found himself there too. He ran, numbed himself with work, poured another drink, kept busy—until he couldn’t anymore. Then came the silence. First unbearable, then something else. Because somewhere in that silence, he began to hear it—the faint, steady presence of something deeper. The Hidden Music, playing underneath it all.

“The Hidden Music resounds, has resounded, as long as time itself, and longer, whether we have ears to hear it or not.”

– Josh Nadeau

At first, all there is is silence. Silent absence. Sheol. Then, if we sit long enough, if we resist the urge to fill the void—for a moment, for a day, maybe even for a whole season—something shifts. A presence once forgotten. A love we thought we had to chase down, only to realize it had already found us.

“If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.”

Psalm 139:8

There is nowhere we can go to escape ourselves.

And yet—there is nowhere we can go where God does not meet us, know us, love us.

What once felt like deep absence is revealed as deep foundness.

Where can we go that we can’t find ourselves? Nowhere.
Where can we go that God won’t find us? Nowhere.
And that is where grace begins. Again. And again. And again.

And so, we enter this season—a season of resisting the urge to fill the void. A season of sitting in the silence long enough to hear what has been there all along.

__________________________________________________________

This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey

This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you. You can keep your reflections private, or if you feel compelled to share, there will be a few simple ways to do so online.

Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here:

\

An Invitation to Reflect: A Lenten Journey Together

Read Psalm 139

Purchase Room For Good Things to Run Wild

#Lent2025 #LentenJourney #Sheol #GraceFoundUs

tbc Lent

A different rhythm for Ash Wednesday (2025)

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a 40-day season of reflection, repentance, and preparation for Easter. The ashes placed on our foreheads remind us of our mortality: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.” This sacred time invites us to seek a deeper relationship with God.

Rather than hosting a full service this year, we will join other communities of faith throughout the city. Various leaders from Tabernacle will coordinate participation in morning, afternoon, and evening services at three unique churches, offering a meaningful opportunity to worship alongside our broader faith community. We encourage everyone to receive ashes at any of these services as part of this shared observance.

For those seeking a more personal experience, ashes will also be available on the Tabernacle portico (weather permitting) or in the Sanctuary from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. The Sanctuary will remain open during this time for quiet reflection and prayer at personal stations. All are warmly invited to come, receive ashes, and stay as long as they feel led to do so.

We will announce the three worship locations and their start times at the end of the week and again on Sunday morning. As we enter this sacred season, may we open our hearts to repentance, renewal, and a deeper connection with God and one another. Let us walk this Lenten journey with intention, embracing both personal reflection and the strength found in community.

Sterling Severns Lent, Life of the Community

An Invitation to Reflect: A Lenten Journey Together

As a pastor, I’m constantly aware of the weight people are carrying—both in what they share with me, in what I see, and in what I’m experiencing in the world. I feel it too. It’s rough out there. The pressure, the exhaustion, the constant noise of life—it’s a lot. And I know many of you are seeing it, feeling it, and carrying it in your own way. We’re all longing for peace.

Next week, Lent begins—a season that invites us to slow down, reflect, and make space for what matters. Not by trying harder, but by making room for something deeper.

So here’s what I’m wondering:

  • What if holiness isn’t about striving but about paying attention?
  • What if faith isn’t something to master but something to wake up to, right in the middle of our ordinary lives?
  • What if Lent isn’t about what we give up, but about what we make space to receive?

I wonder if you might consider joining me this Lent in exploring Room for Good Things to Run Wild: How Ordinary People Become Everyday Saints by Josh Nadeau. It’s 40 brief readings, just a few minutes a day. No book club, no required discussions. Just an open invitation to reflect.

We’ll begin next Wednesday, March 5—one brief reading a day, skipping Sundays, through Saturday, April 19. I’ll post a daily thread where you can share a thought if you want, or you can just sit with the words on your own. Or maybe you read along and never tell a soul—including me. That’s fine, too.

If this sounds like something you’d like to do, grab a copy in print, on Kindle, or on Audible so you’re ready to start next Wednesday.

Let’s see what happens when we make a little room for peace.

Grace and Peace,

Rev. Sterling W. Severns, Pastor

_________________________________

Subscribe to calendar with readings.

Week 1

  • March 5 (Ash Wednesday): Chapter 1 – A Symphony of Hitting Rock Bottom (p. 1)
  • March 6 (Thursday): Chapter 2 – Hypocrisy Reaps No Rewards (p. 11)
  • March 7 (Friday): Chapter 3 – The Winds of Fate Blow Here and There (p. 18)
  • March 8 (Saturday): Chapter 4 – Remove the Organ, Demand the Function (p. 21)
    (March 9 – Sunday: No reading)

Week 2

  • March 10 (Monday): Chapter 5 – The Mechanics of Sainthood (p. 27)
  • March 11 (Tuesday): Chapter 6 – Relapses into Wonder (p. 33)
  • March 12 (Wednesday): Chapter 7 – Open Self-Surgery (p. 41)
  • March 13 (Thursday): Chapter 8 – Starved Hearts (p. 46)
  • March 14 (Friday): Chapter 9 – Wonder Is Food, Not Fact (p. 51)
  • March 15 (Saturday): Chapter 10 – I’ll Pray for You (p. 55)
    (March 16 – Sunday: No reading)

Week 3

  • March 17 (Monday): Chapter 11 – The Discarded Body (p. 59)
  • March 18 (Tuesday): Chapter 12 – Brains in a Vat (p. 73)
  • March 19 (Wednesday): Chapter 13 – Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (p. 81)
  • March 20 (Thursday): Chapter 14 – The Logistics of Listening (p. 84)
  • March 21 (Friday): Chapter 15 – Talk is Cheap (p. 89)
  • March 22 (Saturday): Chapter 16 – Strong in Broken Places (p. 95)
    (March 23 – Sunday: No reading)

Week 4

  • March 24 (Monday): Chapter 17 – Divine Juxtapositions (p. 101)
  • March 25 (Tuesday): Chapter 18 – Knowing God, Knowing Self (p. 109)
  • March 26 (Wednesday): Chapter 19 – A Phenomenology of Sainthood (p. 113)
  • March 27 (Thursday): Chapter 20 – Following the Hidden Music (p. 125)
  • March 28 (Friday): Chapter 21 – The Long Obedience in the Same Direction (p. 130)
  • March 29 (Saturday): Chapter 22 – The Blueprint of a Saint (p. 137)
    (March 30 – Sunday: No reading)

Week 5

  • March 31 (Monday): Chapter 23 – “Now That You Don’t Have to Be Perfect, You Can Be Good” (p. 142)
  • April 1 (Tuesday): Chapter 24 – The Myth of Extraordinary (p. 146)
  • April 2 (Wednesday): Chapter 25 – You Will Be Forgotten (p. 152)
  • April 3 (Thursday): Chapter 26 – Bodies Are Sacramental (p. 158)
  • April 4 (Friday): Chapter 27 – Liturgies for Local Living (p. 164)
  • April 5 (Saturday): Chapter 28 – A Study in Desire (p. 179)
    (April 6 – Sunday: No reading)

Week 6

  • April 7 (Monday): Chapter 29 – Longings Fulfilled (p. 185)
  • April 8 (Tuesday): Chapter 30 – Truth is Not Mere Fact (p. 190)
  • April 9 (Wednesday): Chapter 31 – Rivers Run with Wine (p. 194)
  • April 10 (Thursday): Chapter 32 – All Three, Together (p. 201)
  • April 11 (Friday): Chapter 33 – Like Body, Like Soul (p. 205)
  • April 12 (Saturday): Chapter 34 – You Are What You Love (p. 210)
    (April 13 – Palm Sunday: No reading)

Holy Week

  • April 14 (Monday): Chapter 35 – An Archetype for Being (p. 217)
  • April 15 (Tuesday): Chapter 36 – The Heavenly Cadence (p. 229)
  • April 16 (Wednesday): Chapter 37 – Crafting a Holy Imagination (p. 235)
  • April 17 (Maundy Thursday): Chapter 38 – Working Backward from Heaven
  • April 18 (Good Friday): Chapter 39 – Selah
  • April 19 (Holy Saturday): Chapter 40 – There and Back Again
April Kennedy Abundant Community, Art of Neighboring, Life of the Community, Rule of Life, Rule of Life Together, Testimonies

Beyond Service: How Shared Ministry Fosters True Belonging

As I reflect on the past few months of Community Ministry, one word keeps coming to mind:  Mutuality. This is a place where ministry is not a one-way street. It’s not about one group giving and another receiving. Instead, it’s about neighbors, strangers, and members coming together as equals—each bringing something valuable to the table.

On Saturday mornings, we see neighbors arriving not just with needs but with contributions to make. They bring their stories, wisdom, and care for everyone present. They offer encouragement and generosity—whether it’s through sharing what they have, helping others feel welcome, checking in on someone, helping cook breakfast, or finding the perfect outfit for a neighbor in the clothes closet.

And then there are the volunteers. Some have been members of this church for decades, while others are new faces—people who initially arrived as strangers but have found a home in the work we do together. They bring energy and dedication, and in the process, they become part of the fabric of this community. It’s beautiful to see how quickly someone who came to serve becomes someone who belongs.

As the walls between ‘us’ and ‘them’ break down, we are more able to live into our shared identity as God’s children.

This ministry isn’t just about food, clothes, or showers; it’s about the relationships being formed. It’s about seeing Christ in one another and discovering what happens when we trust that everyone has something to give.

So, thank you. Thank you to the neighbors who come and show us how to love each other better. Thank you to the volunteers who give their time, skills, and hearts. And thank you to the people who call Tabernacle home and support Community Ministry through your participation, prayers, and financial gifts.

As we look ahead, let’s continue leaning into this vision of shared ministry. Let’s keep making space for everyone to contribute, to belong, and to experience God’s presence here.

April Kennedy
Minister of Abundant Community