Weekly Devotion
June 7, 2026

Hello friends,

This summer, I don't want us to be projects. I want us to be porous… able to let in some wonder, some surprise, and maybe even some sunshine. (Except my Dad, who truly hates the outdoors, so I just won’t ask him to start now.)

But being porous this summer is my wish particularly for those of us who spend so much of our lives caring for other people.

The pastors carrying everyone else’s grief while quietly tending their own. The ministry leaders who organize the meals, teach the class, answer the texts, lead the meetings, and somehow still wonder whether they are doing enough. The volunteers who keep showing up early to unlock doors and make coffee and stack chairs. The Sunday school teachers who are trying to explain wonder to children while feeling a tad-bit spiritually threadbare themselves.

Ministry has a way of making us useful before it lets us be human.

And by the time summer arrives, many of us are exhausted in that peculiar way — where we are still functioning, still serving, still needed, but no longer entirely sure we remember how to rest or say no or tend to our own families and relationships well.

I’ve been thinking a lot about joy lately. The whole machinery of modern adulthood is set against joy. We optimize ourselves away from being surprised, being interrupted, putting ourselves in joy’s way.

But we cannot live like that forever.We need fresher air.

So this summer, I would love to invite you to try something with me: a Joyful Anywhere Summer. Not a self-improvement plan. Not a “best summer ever” challenge. Not another opportunity to optimize our lives while secretly exhausting ourselves. Just a season of becoming more available to delight. More emotionally open to surprise. More willing to notice what is already here.

Over on Substack all summer long, I’ll be sharing weekly reflections, practices, conversations, lists, micro joys, absurd observations, books, stories, and experiments in what it means to live with a little more openness to joy — not as denial, not as forced positivity, but as a way of staying alive to the world while it is still very much the world.

This is the kind of joy that doesn’t wait for anything to get better or for us to feel happy. But the kind that might surprise us at a kitchen sink, in a fellowship hall after everyone leaves, on a walk between hospital visits, sitting on the back steps after VBS, or listening to the cicadas long enough to remember that we are creatures too. Not machines for other people’s flourishing, but God’s beloved ones.

Blessed are the porous, for they will be met with joy.

Onward, Kate Bowler

(from Kate Bowler email May 21, 2026)