A 40-Day Lenten Prayer Journey

Maybe you know this feeling.

 When what you’ve been working so hard for just vanishes. When what you’re holding slips right through your fingers and the ground underneath you gives way and you don’t know where you’ll land.

 It may not be a phone call of rejection. Maybe it’s the news of a sudden diagnosis. An accident that has significantly changed your mobility. A betrayal. A sudden loss. A failure you can’t undo. Maybe it’s the bonds of marriage losing their vitality. A friendship that has fallen out of favor. Family bonds that feel thin and are fraying at the edges.

 This feeling that things are not the way they used to be or supposed to be.

 Or maybe it’s something bigger than your personal life. The news that won’t stop scrolling. The wars that won’t stop escalating. I was talking with someone this week about what’s happening in the world, and they said, ‘It just feels like everything’s spiraling into chaos and I can feel the strain on my mental health.’

 We live with this persistent anxiety that things won’t hold. That the center cannot hold. Sometimes it feels like we’re just one crisis away from coming completely undone.

If you’ve ever felt that way before, here’s a thought. 

 You’re not the only one who’s felt this way.

A Song for Uncertain Times

Christians living in Colossae at the time of Paul’s writing likely knew exactly what it was like to live in uncertain times, when the fabric of life felt like it was slowly unraveling.

Colossae was a city living in the shadows. Once prosperous, now declining. Once it was an important stop on the major trade routes, but now bigger cities like Laodicea and Hierapolis took center stage. The city of Colossae was fading.

And into that fading city came all kinds of competing spiritualities. The marketplace of ideas, philosophies, and religions was hustling and bustling. Mystery religions promising secret knowledge. Philosophies guaranteeing enlightenment. Religious practices that promised a firmer place to stand. People, grasping for anything that might make them feel like they can hold together the tattered edges of their lives.

I can imagine that this small community of first-generation Christians living in Colossae may have felt similar feelings, like life is coming apart at the seams, unraveling right before their eyes, asking themselves the same questions we ask: What’s happening? Where’s this all going? Who’s in charge? Can anything hold when everything feels like it’s falling apart?

So, Paul pens this letter. He writes to this fledgling congregation. But instead of giving them a new philosophy or a better argument—Paul gives them a song. A hymn. Not to explain the chaos, but to show them the structure of the world as it truly is. To show them where all of this is actually going. To remind them that there’s someone—not something, but someone—who holds it all together.

Paul doesn’t give them an idea. He gives them a person. Reminding them of the One who holds all things together, and the One who is making all things whole.

This was the song the early church sang to anchor them when it felt like the foundations of their lives were crumbling. This was the song they sang, a song in praise of Christ Jesus, a song about the One who holds all things together and who makes all things whole again.

What Lent Offers

For nearly two thousand years, the church has observed Lent. Forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. It’s the church’s ancient rhythm of walking with Jesus from the wilderness to the cross to the empty tomb.

Lent is not about perfection. It is not about doing more or trying harder. It is about making space. Space to breathe, to reflect, to listen, to lament, to hope, and to be renewed. This season welcomes everything we carry—grief and gladness, weariness and joy, doubt and faith, struggle and gratitude. Wherever you are in this season of life, you are welcome here. Whatever you carry, bring it all.

Because Lent acknowledges what we often try to ignore: life is fragile. Things break. Dreams fall short. And in the midst of that brokenness, Lent asks: Where is God? What is God doing? How do we live when everything feels like it’s falling apart?

This Lenten season, we need that ancient song. We need to behold Christ. Not as an idea, but as a person. The One who entered into our brokenness. The One who knows what it’s like when life falls apart. The One who holds us when we can’t hold ourselves together.

The Journey Ahead

This 40-day prayer journey begins where Jesus began—in the wilderness, facing temptation. For four days, we walk with Jesus through His testing. We learn what it means to trust God when we feel empty, pressured, or afraid.

Then we move through the Christ Hymn itself. Verse by verse. Week by week. We behold Christ as the image of the invisible God, as Creator and Sustainer, as the One who holds all things together, as the head of His body the church, as firstborn from the dead, and finally as the Reconciler who makes peace through the cross.

Seven Movements:

Ash Wednesday + 3 Days: Christ in the Wilderness

Week 1: The Image of the Invisible God (v. 15)

Week 2: All Things Created Through Him and For Him (v. 16)

Week 3: In Him All Things Hold Together (v. 17)

Week 4: The Head of the Body, the Church (v. 18a)

Week 5: Firstborn from the Dead—Supreme in All Things (v. 18b)

Week 6 (Holy Week): Reconciling All Things Through the Cross (vv. 19-20)