Heather Smith’s Reviews > The 40 Day Lent Devotional for Women 2026: Prepare Your Heart for Lent and Easter With Daily Scripture, Prayers, Journaling Prompts, Simple Practices for Peace and Spiritual Renewal > Status Update

Day 39: Good Friday.
John 19:30 “When He had received His drink, Jesus said, “It is finished .” With that, He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.”

Day Thirty-Six: Palm Sunday.
Matthew 21:9-“The crowds that went ahead of him and those that shouted, ‘Hosanna to the Highest, Son of David.’ Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” ‘Hosanna in the highest Heaven!’

Day Thirty-Three: 2 Corinthians 1:4 “who comforts us in all our troubles,so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we receive ourselves from God.”

The verse doesn’t rush past the trouble but starts with the comfort.

Day Thirty-One: John 11:35, “Jesus Wept.”
Jesus wept means grief is not unfaithful. Tears are not a lack of trust. If the Son of God can stand at a grave and cry, then we can stop treating our sadness as a spiritual problem. Grief is the honest response to loss and loss deserves tenderness. Tears can be a form of prayer when the words don’t come.

Day Thirty: Hebrews 4:15, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are; yet He did not sin.”

Jesus understands the pull, the exhaustion, the temptation and knows what it is to be human in a whole full of hurt. Jesus helps us without shaming us.

Day Twenty-Nine: Isaiah 53:3 — “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.”

Jesus was also familiar with pain.

Day Twenty-Eight: Psalm 23:4 — “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Psalm 23 doesn’t deny the valley. It doesn’t tell us to reframe it into something cute. It names it: “the darkest valley.” And then it gives us one of the most stabilizing words in the whole Psalm: “walk.” Not sprint. Not collapse.Walk.

Day Twenty-Seven: Lamentations 3:22–23 — “Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” And then comes the daily mercy: “They are new every morning.” New doesn’t mean flashy. It means quiet.God’s faithfulness isn’t measured by how quickly your story resolve; it’s measured by how faithfully He stays.

Day Twenty-Six: Isaiah 40:29 — “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.”
He gives strength to the weary. Not to the impressive. Not to the “fine.” To the weary. And He “increases the power of the weak.”But this verse suggests the opposite: bring the weakness to Him, because that’s where the strength comes.