Jesus doesn’t help us out of life’s messes by offering advice or even lending a helping hand. His footprints prove he’s walked through the worst of life’s messes for us. Those same footprints have paved our path out. This week we see how Jesus makes the terrain that is closest to home familiar to him. While we like to set up walls to keep God out of certain areas of our life, Jesus steps up to the doors in those walls and is determined to come in. He comes to us expecting to be our king. However, he wins his crown in the most unexpected of ways: he surrenders to his enemies rather than crushing them.

Jesus doesn’t help us out of life’s messes by offering advice or even lending a helping hand. His footprints prove he’s walked through the worst of life’s messes for us. Those same footprints have paved our path out. This week we see how Jesus is willing to step into the place where the mess is the deepest and its pain is the sharpest. Jesus footprints lead all the way to the grave where he rescues us from death and brings us the gift of life.

Jesus doesn’t help us out of life’s messes by offering advice or even lending a helping hand. His footprints prove he’s walked through the worst of life’s messes for us. Those same footprints have paved our path out. This week we see how Jesus steps into our natural assumptions about how God will operate in our lives. It’s natural to think that in order receive divine favor or blessing, we must earn it. We must pull the right divine levers or push the right divine buttons, so to speak. However, Jesus came to demonstrate how God does his greatest through what seems to be smallest. He doesn’t want us to work for his blessing. He wants us to trust that he will freely give it.

Jesus doesn’t help us out of life’s messes by offering advice or even lending a helping hand. His footprints prove he’s walked through the worst of life’s messes for us. Those same footprints have paved our path out. This week we see how sin creates in us a spiritual thirst. It leaves us with longings that this world cannot possibly satisfy. Thankfully, Jesus steps into a world that can only leave us thirsty with the only water that satisfies. He promises living water to satisfy our souls so that they will never thirst again.

Jesus doesn’t help us out of life’s messes by offering advice or even lending a helping hand. His footprints prove he’s walked through the worst of life’s messes for us. Those same footprints have paved our path out. This week we see how our mess—and God’s willingness to step into it—all started. When our first parents brought our race under the control of sin and its curse, God stepped in with unfailing love and a promise to send a Savior. Eventually, Jesus came to be that Savior who stepped onto the field of battle in our place to bring perfect righteousness back to a world of sin.

The need for approval explains so much of human behavior. On Ash Wednesday, we acknowledge that the approval we need can't come from ourselves and can't come from others. Thankfully, our baptism unites us with Jesus in his death and resurrection. As a result, we have the same Father he has and receive the same approval he does.

When God speaks, he does more than convey information. He changes reality. That was true when he pierced the world’s natural darkness with light in the beginning. It remains true as he speaks to us the good news about Jesus, the light of the world. Through that message he brings us light and enables us to see life as he sees it. This week we see how the light of God’s Word is a light that he puts at our disposal. The light that has the power to open our eyes and transform our lives is a light that we have the ability shine into our hearts and the hearts of others whenever we want. We do not have to wait for some rare, supernatural revelation of that light. God puts the light at our disposal by tying it to his Word.

When God speaks, he does more than convey information. He changes reality. That was true when he pierced the world’s natural darkness with light in the beginning. It remains true as he speaks to us the good news about Jesus, the light of the world. Through that message he brings us light and enables us to see life as he sees it. This week we see how the light of God’s Word directs the lives who are eager to serve God. Just like you would not go running at full speed through a dark woods without a flashlight, so also those who desire to serve God with their lives benefit from the direction his light provides.

When God speaks, he does more than convey information. He changes reality. That was true when he pierced the world’s natural darkness with light in the beginning. It remains true as he speaks to us the good news about Jesus, the light of the world. Through that message he brings us light and enables us to see life as he sees it. This week we see how light attracts people to its source. Just like the glow of a fire attracts people on a dark night in the woods, so also the light that shines forth from Christians attracts people to its source: Christ. God gives Christians time and opportunity to let their lights shine that others would see it and join them in giving glory to God.