We are thrilled to share these Lenten reflections with you, centered on the theme, Everything is Sacred. As students gather each day at Lutheran Campus Ministry for our Taste of Grace community lunch, I am reminded again and again that God meets us in the mundane: in bread and water, dirt and grass, hugs and pain.

St. Teresa of Avila instructed her sisters to recognize God in the most ordinary places of life. “When obedience calls you… into the kitchen, amidst the pots and pans, remember that our Lord goes along with you,” she wrote. So often, we overlook God’s presence in these lowly places, preferring to constrain the holy to what is beautiful or otherworldly.

In Lent, we are reminded that God chooses another way. As Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem and the cross, we discover once again that God does not remain divorced from this world but humbles himself to take on our likeness. In the cross, he redeems all that God has made.

In this year’s devotional we ask: what if we understand church as more than a building, more than a liturgy, more than a gathering, but rather as the Body of Christ? A body made up of living, breathing, embodied, broken humanity redeemed by Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Each of us is welcomed in to Christ’s body in Holy Baptism, in which God claims us and assures us of salvation which begins now – in this life, in the world around us.

This Lenten Devotional meets us at a human, elemental level. Members of the Lutheran Campus Ministry community reflect on how God meets us in the mundane. Each day will have a very basic theme, followed by a corresponding scripture verse and reflection.

Thank you for being a part of this community – a member of the Body of Christ. May God nourish your Lenten journey through these reflections and be revealed to you in the sacredness of daily life.