Abraham Piper asks: “What are you better at than other people?…Now you know what you should do for them.”

Former President George W. Bush speaks out on President Barack Obama, saying he wants Obama to succeed and that it’s “essential” to support the new leader. Instead of taking potshots at Obama, Bush said the new president has enough critics and that he “deserves my silence.” Bush also said, “I love my country a lot more than I love politics. I think it is essential that he be helped in office.”

Ray Pritchard reminds us that God’s delays are not the same as God’s denials. “If Jesus had healed Lazarus, that would have been a great miracle. Raising him from the dead was an even greater one. God’s delays are not the same as God’s denials. If we know that, we can keep believing even while we wait for an answer that has not yet come. You never know when a resurrection is on the way.”

Peter Leichart shares some lenten thoughts on fasting and feasting. “Fasting looks like an enemy to life, but the opposite is true. We live abundantly only if we know how to fast—which is to say, only if we are disciplined to wait until the feast is ready. Lent trains us to be a people of patience and restraint, a people who rejoices in a God who has time and gives us time and makes us wait for the treasures He gives.”

David Wayne (who is battling cancer) writes about suffering as witness. “The thinking goes that God sends trials to teach us a lesson and thus, we should expect relief once the lesson is learned. When the trial continues beyond what we expected or hoped, we wonder what is wrong with us — we [think we] must not have learned enough from them … [W]hile acknowledging that suffering has a teaching focus in the life of a believer, I think we ought to expand our view of suffering to see it as a means of witness. I know that many do, but maybe this ought to be given the greater weight.”