Breaking the God Box
Mar 2, 2026 | By Tori Cook JE ‘26
Lent is meant to be a season of preparation and transformation—preparation for the transformation that has already occurred in the Easter miracle. As Christians, we can be very methodical about it: choose a fast (no more chocolate!), give designated alms, recommit to a present prayer life, etc. Honestly, too methodical. Transformation is never comfortable, but I worry our Lenten seasons often are.
The invitation of Lent is not primarily to give things up, but to let God in. We don’t often reject God outright, but we do reduce him to a size we’re comfortable with. I call this phenomenon the God Box. The God Box is the quiet, often subconscious set of expectations and beliefs we hold about what God can and cannot do, where He is allowed to work, and how much of our lives He is permitted to touch. These boundaries don’t limit God, but they limit the way we look for God in our lives, domesticating him and relegating him to church on Sundays, emergencies, and crises of faith. Sometimes these beliefs look like “He can forgive, but he can’t transform my habit,” “God cares about my career, but I’m on my own with my course schedule or extracurriculars,” “Jesus cares about my soul, but not my stress.”
Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to invite God into certain areas of our lives that we feel we can better manage on our own—our romantic relationships, our time use habits, our finances, etc. But God has never been the comfortable God, he is the Living God, and he will “accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (NRSVCE Ephesians 3:20). God is not selective in his scope: all the hairs of your head are numbered, and all the cares of your life accounted for (Luke 12:7).
Likewise, God is not more accessible in the holy season of Lent than he is at any other time. It’s rather us who make ourselves more receptive to him in these times. This season of fasting is the perfect time to recognize and break the boxes we create for God, creating a habit of inviting God into every day regardless of the season. By allowing Lent to train our spiritual attention, it can loosen our grip on the illusion of self-sufficiency we carry throughout the rest of the year.
True, when we break God out of our boxes, we’re risking disruption. We risk God sneaking into our carefully constructed plans, identities, and comforts and turning them on their heads. This requires the preparation Lent is meant to encourage. God may ask us to forgive where we didn’t realize forgiveness was needed, to rest when we’d rather drown ourselves in work, or trust when we’d rather walk a well-beaten path. The God who raises the dead doesn’t allow us to wallow in familiar, deluded self-independence.
Ultimately, the God Box is broken not by our effort, but by our surrender. We begin to notice him not only in prayer times, but in deadlines, in friendships, in moments of joy, anxiety and indecision. We discover that the same power that accomplished the Easter miracle is still at work in the mundane, unaesthetic corners of our lives. Perhaps the real transformation of Lent is this: learning to live as if God is not confined to the sacred corners we designate, but freely present and powerfully active in every moment of every day.