Scripture: Ezekiel 36:26 (NRSVUE) – “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Message: I’ve learned over time that numbness often feels safer than vulnerability.  When disappointment or grief lingers too long, it’s easier to harden than to hope.  What begins as a way to protect ourselves, can quietly become a way we stop fully living.

In Ezekiel, God speaks to a people who had endured years of loss and displacement.  Their hearts had grown hard, not because they stopped believing, but because survival demanded it.  God does not shame them for this.  Instead, God names it honestly and promises something new.

A heart of flesh is not a fragile heart.  It is a living one.  It can feel again, through grief, hope, trust, and love.  God is not promising an easier life, but a renewed capacity to respond to life with openness rather than with armor and resistance.  This approach moves us towards things that bring life, and life to the fullest.

Lent invites us to notice where we may have grown numb and to trust God with those places.  We do not soften our own hearts through effort.  We open our hearts by placing them back into God’s care.

God does not promise an easier heart and an easier life, but a living heart and an abundant life.

Prayer: God of renewal, You know the places in me that have grown hard from carrying too much for too long.  Gently remove what no longer gives life and restore in me a heart that can feel, trust, and love again.  Amen.

Pastor Will Kendust

Tuskawilla United Methodist Church, Casselberry, Florida

Don't forget, today's Lenten Gathering with Michelle Rosario