Once more!” Hannah’s strawberry-blonde curls tickle Asher’s arm as she nestles closer, like a small bird finding its nest. Her touch is feather-light, yet it anchors him to now – to peace, to presence. So different from the chains that once bound these hands.
Asher turns his palm skyward, studying skin that has forgotten how to bruise. Scars have faded to silver whispers, barely visible in morning light. Only memory knows they’re there, and even memory has lost its sting.
“Pleeeease!” Hannah bounces on her toes, her whole body a testament to three-year-old impatience. Her free hand tugs at his sleeve, leaving sticky traces of whatever thing she’s been eating.
“But yesterday—” Asher starts, his lips already curving into a smile he once thought lost forever. “Yesterday was forever ago!” She settles against his side like a puppy finding its spot, warm and trusting.
“Well,” he begins, voice gentle as dawn light, “I used to be a very unhappy man.” “No way!” Hannah’s giggle bubbles up pure as spring water. She pats his cheek with sticky fingers, her disbelief absolute. “Way,” he confirms, catching her small hand and pretending to nibble her fingers until she squeals.
“And then—” she prompts, wriggling with delight at her role as storyteller, “—you lived all alone in the scary caves!” “Until one special night,” Asher nods, remembering darkness and storm. “When Jesus came!” Hannah claps her hands. “First whoosh! He made the storm go quiet. Then swoosh! He made the bad feelings go away!”
Asher watches her face glow with wonder at a story she’s claimed as her own. Years have passed since that night when Jesus left him here – not as punishment but as gift. “Tell them,” He had said, “how God had mercy on you.” And Asher does, each telling washing him cleaner.
“And now you tell me the story whenever I ask,” Hannah concludes with supreme satisfaction, snuggling closer. “Because Jesus made you all whole.”
Asher kisses her crown, breathing in sunshine and sticky sweetness. His eyes drift to the distant shore where his life changed. The same waters that once carried his salvation now catch morning light like scattered gems.
The storms still come sometimes. But now they bring only stories, not screams.
As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed begged to go with him. But Jesus said, “No, go home to your family, and tell them everything the Lord has done for you and how merciful he has been.” So the man started off to visit the Ten Towns of that region and began to proclaim the great things Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed at what he told them.
MARK 5:19-20
We made it. And more than that – look at where we’ve arrived.
Not just at the final week of Asher’s journey. We have arrived at Holy Week itself – the week the whole Christian year has been bending toward, the week the stone gets rolled away, the week death turns out not to have the last word after all. We step into Week Seven the same way the disciples stepped out of Saturday – not quite sure what is coming, but feeling something shift in the air.
Something is buzzing. Can you feel it?
But let’s be honest first. Because Lent deserves honesty.
Maybe you’ve walked all six weeks with Asher and you still don’t feel like Jesus showed up on your side of the lake. Maybe the storm is still going. Maybe you’re still somewhere in the tombs, and the chains don’t feel like silver whispers yet – they feel like chains. Maybe you watched Asher’s story unfold week after week and thought: good for him. But my miracle hasn’t come.
That is a real place to be. And it is a welcome place to begin Week Seven from.
Because here is what the story never tells you about that night on the water: Asher didn’t know the help was already on its way. He was mid-storm, mid-terror, mid-darkness – and Jesus was already moving. Already crossing. Already carrying in his body the intention to speak peace into exactly that chaos.
The help being on its way doesn’t feel like help yet. But it is.
This night will pass. Hold onto that. Believe it even when you can’t feel it. Especially when you can’t feel it.
And then listen to what Mark gives us – just a few chapters on from Asher’s story.
The same gospel. The same Jesus. And this:
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” – Mark 11:24
Believe that you have received it. Past tense. Before it arrives. Before you can see it or hold it or point to it and say: there, that’s the answer.
This is not wishful thinking. This is the prayer of the greatest faith – and it has a name. The Bible reaches for it hundreds of times across both testaments, from the psalms of David to the letters of Paul, in every key and every season. The name is gratitude.
Gratitude is not what you feel after the miracle. Gratitude is what you practice toward the miracle – the act of already giving thanks for what you have not yet received, because you trust the One who promised it. It is the most audacious form of prayer there is. It is faith with its hands open.
Asher understood this in the end.
He walked through Decapolis – that wide, scattered, mostly-Gentile region, ten cities spread across the hills – and he told anyone who would listen about what God had done. Not in a temple. Not to the already-converted. Out in the open, to whoever crossed his path.
He didn’t wait until he had his life perfectly together. He didn’t wait until the scars had faded completely or the memory had lost all its sting. He walked, and he spoke, and the speaking was itself an act of praise.
Maybe we’re not there yet. Maybe the particular miracle we were hoping for when we began this journey seven weeks ago still hasn’t arrived in the form we expected. That’s all right. That’s honest. We don’t have to pretend otherwise.
But here is what we can do, right now, in this Holy Week, in this Easter-charged air: we can pay careful attention. We can turn toward everything we have received – all the things that live in the blindspots of our disappointment, invisible not because they’re absent but because disappointment narrows the frame. We can begin to name them. We can begin to give thanks.
And in the giving of thanks, something happens. The colour of perception shifts. Gratitude doesn’t change our circumstances – it changes what we can see within them. It widens the frame. It lets the light back in.
It can be spring even if you’re finishing this journey in November. It can be Easter even if your particular tomb still feels sealed. Because Easter isn’t only an event that happened – it’s a direction. It’s the direction everything is moving in.
So enter this last week with everything you have.
Bring the gratitude you feel and the gratitude you don’t feel yet. Bring your lists and your silences and the word that rises unbidden in the stillness. Bring whatever Asher’s story opened in you – the thing you noticed, the week that landed differently than the others, the morning you sat down and something quietly shifted.
Bring it all. This week holds it all.
And when you reach Day Seven – when you look back across the whole journey from the shore of where you’ve arrived – you may find that more happened than you realized. You may find that you have, in fact, already received something.
Before we step through this final door together.
When you finish with Asher – when Holy Week has moved into Easter and Easter into ordinary time and the practice of stillness has become something you carry rather than something you follow – there will be another story waiting for you here.
We are going next to the Old Testament. To a young man who was so alive with dreams that his brothers couldn’t stand it. Who was thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, imprisoned on a false accusation – and who dreamed anyway. Who held something so far inside him that no amount of outer devastation could reach it.
Joseph. Son of Jacob. Dreamer, prisoner, exile, and – in the end – the man whose impossible childhood dream outlasted everything the world did to unmake it.
If Asher’s journey was from tombs to freedom, Joseph’s will be from pit to palace.
He’ll be here when you’re ready.
For now – one more night with Asher. One more week of stillness, and breath, and the word that wants to come.
Go in mercy. Go in hope. Go in the direction Easter is always pointing.
More about Asher’s Biblical roots.
More about Dust to Grace series.
Have you missed any of the previous weeks? Here you find all the titles.
