Tag Archives: 2026

Ash Wednesday 2026

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The Church now stands at the threshold of one of her most searching seasons. Lent is not just another stretch of the calendar. In fact, if ever there was a Church season that could see through the masks we wear all year long, it’s Lent. It’s a season that presses upon us who we really are. In that sense, it’s recalibrating. It calls us back to better clarity.

But first, Ash Wednesday, the gateway into Lent.

In Ash Wednesday’s solemn liturgy, cooled cinders are placed upon our foreheads—the remains of what fire has consumed, the residue of destruction. As they’re smeared, you are told, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This is the biblical origin of the philosophers’ ancient phrase “Memento mori”—remember that you must die.

If, for some reason, you miss these words, rest assured, the ashes themselves will preach them. They are rough to the touch, pitch black, and stubborn to remove. They insist that death is no abstraction. It is the wage of sin, and it leaves its mark on every human life. There is nothing delicate about it. It is brutal consequence.

If you’ve ever stood in line to receive those ashes, then perhaps you already know the quiet gravity of it. One person steps forward, then another, and then another, until at last it’s your turn. You are dust. Memento mori. Each of us must face the same end. Each of us must reckon with the same truth. The Divine finger of God’s unalterable Law presses heavily against our hearts, corralling us into the fellowship of Adam, who heard God say through him to all of us, because of what we’ve done, “cursed is the ground because of you” (Genesis 3:17).

And yet, there is something else to know in these moments. Pay attention. If possible, watch the finger applying the ashes. If you can’t see it, look around you. See the same mark you bear being borne by everyone else around you. The mark is in the form of a cross. However uneven the lines may be, that shape is unmistakable.

See that mark and know you are a child of promise. Yes, memento mori. But also, memento Christus—remember Christ! You were claimed by the One who has entered death and overcome it. The cross traced in ashes declares that the end of Man is not the end of Christ, and therefore it is not the end of those who belong to Him.

Scripture teaches that we carry in our bodies not only the death of Jesus but also His life (2 Corinthians 4:10-11). His death was no defeat. On the contrary, it was the death of death itself. By His resurrection, the grave has lost its dominion, and its sting has been taken away (1 Corinthians 15:54-57). We are children of that promise!

Regardless of how other churches prefer to enter into Lent, this is how Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Hartland, Michigan, begins it. We keep Ash Wednesday. We need the reminder. Left to ourselves, we grow comfortable. We begin to imagine that life in this fallen world is stable, predictable, maybe even secure. Ash Wednesday strips away those illusions. It teaches us to see clearly what sin has wrought, and at the same time it directs us to the only refuge that endures—to Christ, who has entered the darkness and shattered it from within.

And then we go forth into the season. We meet the great struggle at the heart of our redemption. The contest between Christ and death will appear, for a time, to be no contest at all. Our Lord will be mocked, beaten, scourged, and crucified. He will yield Himself fully into the hands of His enemies. To every earthly calculation, it will look like utter ruin.

Yet that is precisely where the victory is won. And we will receive it as it truly is, even when it appears weak or foolish by the world’s measure. We know it’s a kingdom established by a crucified King.

The cross, in all its horror, stands at the center of the Gospel. It is harsh to behold, and yet it is good—profoundly good—because there the Son of God bore the sin of the world and reconciled us to the Father. And so, Saint Paul writes with fervor, “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23). Indeed, we do, and without shame. The Gospel is and remains the power of God unto salvation for all who believe (Romans 1:16-17).

For all of these reasons, I encourage you, if you’ve never attended the Ash Wednesday liturgy, make the effort to do so. Receive the ashes. Hear the Word. Begin the Lenten journey as the Church has long begun it—with repentance, with sobriety, and with hope fixed firmly on Christ.

Here at Our Savior, we’ll gather on Ash Wednesday for worship at 8:10 a.m. and then again at 6:30 p.m. You are welcome to come. Indeed, join with the faithful. Be reminded of life’s frailty, and—far more importantly—to hear again the promise of the One who said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25-26).

New Year’s Day 2026

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I wasn’t going to write and send anything out today. But then, here I am at my computer, tapping away. This morning’s worship service isn’t until 10:00 a.m., and so, apart from other preparations, I guess I do have some time. Besides, it felt wrong not to reach out and at least share something that might help with your first day of 2026.

I suppose I can start by telling you that the first words out of my mouth when I woke up this morning were a prayer of thanksgiving. I thanked the Lord for my family. I thanked the Lord for the congregation I serve. I thanked the Lord for all the blessings He has granted to me—both known and unknown in my past, present, and future. Then I got up, took a shower, got dressed, and headed out into the familiar but unpleasant Michigan tundra.

Waking up and praying is always a good way to start one’s day. But my first meal, that was something else. Despite my secret intentions for the new year, which is to try eating better, the first thing I consumed was a greasy hashbrown from McDonald’s at 5:55 a.m., followed later by my usual bowl of cereal here at my desk. Most mornings, a bowl of cereal in my office is part of my routine before I get started on anything else. But I don’t usually eat McDonald’s hashbrowns. However, I saw that the Hartland McDonald’s was open, so I stopped for coffee. The hashbrown sounded good. With that, I slid backward in my intentions before I even got started. So much for a perfect start. Well, we win some and lose some. Although anyone who thinks personal growth means instant consistency has never tried to live faithfully for more than a few hours at a time. Saint Paul understood this well when he spoke of the conflict within us—the desire to do what is good, set against the pull of the flesh that resists it (Romans 7:15-19).

And yet, Paul’s point isn’t perfection. It is a right knowledge combined with willful direction. It is choosing, again and again, to fight against the worst desires and to embrace the better ones. Paul writes that the flesh and the Spirit are opposed to one another. (Galatians 5:16-17). He doesn’t share this critical detail so we can excuse our failures. He wants us to be aware. Awareness allows for preparation and action. For starters, it grants that the Christian life is not the absence of temptation, but the daily, often quiet decision to walk by the Spirit rather than surrender to what comes most naturally. When, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we’re aware of the sinner/saint struggle, we can embrace prayer before complaint. We can lean toward obedience before personal comfort. We can know to do the better thing even when we don’t feel like doing anything at all. I suppose in one sense, sometimes faithfulness looks less like complete victory and more like simply showing up and trying, all by God’s grace, of course (Romans 8:1-4).

It is also worth remembering that even this willingness—to try, to lean in, to turn toward what’s better—it’s not something we manufacture. Again, it’s the Holy Spirit who creates willing hearts. And He does so by the Gospel (Philippians 2:13, Romans 10:17).

Now, you know what I’m going to say next, don’t you? Well, since you already know, I won’t dress it up.

Go to church. Being present where the Gospel gifts are given matters more than anything else at any time of any given year. God has promised to strengthen and sustain His people through His visible and verbal Word. That means if one really wants to step in and fight the flesh, being where Christ is preached and His gifts are administered should not be a second thought but a priority all year long (Hebrews 10:24-25).

So, if your year has already begun imperfectly, take heart. The only flawless beginning or ending we require is securely located in Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Savior. By His person and work, the perfection that saves was accomplished. Through faith in Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit at work through the Gospel, our hearts are recrafted to trust Him, and thereby to receive the merits of His incredible work.

And then into the daily struggle we go. As we do, we remember that while the outer self may scrap against the sin-nature, God is at work within us, shaping endurance, humility, and hope right there in the middle of the fight (2 Corinthians 4:16). Indeed, “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

With that, I encourage you not to become downhearted in the new year when you fall short. Remember, an all-important muscle in the struggle is repentance itself. Keep choosing the better things. Keep turning toward what’s good. And when you stumble, don’t quit. Repent, receive Christ’s forgiveness, and then rise and keep going, mindful of the divine encouragement, “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).

I’m praying for you. I trust you’ll be praying for me, too.

A blessed New Year to you!

New Year’s Eve 2025

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I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more New Year’s Eve loses its luster. It feels less like a party and more like a bedtime challenge. Can I make it to midnight? Can I even make it past 9:30? I think William Vaughn said it best, “Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.”

For the record, I stopped trying for midnight years ago, especially with a worship service in the morning. Still, the moment has never been lost on me. New Year’s Eve—the day itself—has always been a moment to pause. It can be sort of a held breath between what was and what will be, if only we’ll take the opportunity to consider it. Right now, I’m sitting at my dining room table. Even with a quick glance around the room, I’m reminded of just how quickly things can change.

For example, right across from where I’m sitting, a poster-sized photo hangs on the wall. Jennifer snapped the picture. Essentially, she captured a moment we can never revisit.

The photo was taken on a beautiful, sun-washed day at a beachside restaurant near Lemon Bay, Florida—one we visited with some relatively newfound friends at the time who knew the place and loved it. In the image, there’s a wooden post planted in the sand with forty or so signs nailed to it, each pointing somewhere else—cities across the United States, and a few beyond its borders, all measured in miles from that very spot. A bird is perched on one of the top signs, palled by a nearby palm tree’s shadow. It’s as if the bird’s deciding which of the cities he’ll choose to visit next. The sky is bright blue, interrupted only by a handful of clouds. Everything about the picture feels calm, steady, and permanent.

But permanence is a lie we tell ourselves when the sun is shining and things are easy. Hurricane Ian erased everything in that photo back in 2022. The sign, the restaurant, the familiar stretch of beach, it was all pretty much gone overnight. It was reduced to ocean-soaked debris and memory.

That said, I can promise you, the Thoma family loves the image all the more, if only because everything in it is gone. In a way, it’s not just a photograph for us anymore. It’s a reminder that certain moments don’t ask our permission before they become history. We will never stand there again. We will never see that post in the sand exactly as it was. We’ll never be able to visit that restaurant and relive that moment.

New Year’s Eve has a way of turning our attention toward that same kind of truth. We look back at the year behind us and realize how much of it has vanished without much ceremony. I think of my dear Christian friend, Alex Bak, who died just before Christmas. We had recent conversations together that I never suspected would be our last. Like the signs near the beachfront restaurant, I lived as though Alex would always be there. I just assumed I’d always see Alex sitting in his same pew near the post on the pulpit side of the church’s nave. Indeed, plenty of other things have happened all around me that felt ordinary at the time but now feel sacred because they’re gone.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that time moves forward with or without my consent. The clock ticks with absolute indifference to my nostalgia.

But I have an upper hand on the clock’s cruelty. As a Christian, I know Christ is present in every moment. “Behold,” He said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Everything we love in this world is fragile. I’ve been known to say from the pulpit from time to time that everything has an expiration date. Everything is subject to wind, water, decay, and time. But the thing is, Christ stands right in the middle of the storms. He’s a fixed anchor right in the middle of all our victories and losses. He’s unshaken and unchanging. He does not promise that the signposts will remain standing. He doesn’t promise that the forthcoming year and its moments will be gentle. But He does promise Himself. And with that promise comes the impenetrable truth of a kingdom that cannot be washed away, grasped by a hope-filled strength that does not weaken or erode.

So as 2025 becomes 2026, just as I won’t cling to the misapprehension that I can stay up until midnight, I won’t hold to the illusion that the coming year will somehow be free from struggle or loss. Time has cured me of that naiveté. There will be storms I didn’t see coming, moments I assumed would last that didn’t, and conversations I didn’t realize were final until they already were. But those potential realities are not hollow or hopeless when viewed through the lens of the Gospel. The calendar can change all it wants. Christ remains the same—yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

Indeed, the world may lose its landmarks. Favorite places and moments may disappear into the Gulf, maybe even becoming portraits on our dining room walls. But in the middle of all of it, the cross still stands, unmoved by this world’s winds and waves, untouched by time’s inevitable erosion. And that’s enough for me. I have everything I need in Jesus, which means I’ll have everything I need in 2026. My prayer is that He’ll be enough for you in the new year, too.

By the way, if your church doesn’t offer a New Year’s Eve service, stop by Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hartland, Michigan. Ours is at 4:30 pm. For the record, I’ve never met anyone who was disappointed they went to church on New Year’s Eve.