Biola University’s Center for Christianity, Culture and the Arts (CCCA) is launching its 2026 Lent Project, a free online devotional that invites participants to meditate on Mark’s account of Jesus being the servant messiah. From Ash Wednesday, February 18, through Easter Sunday, April 5, this year’s project, called “The Servant King We Long to Know,” focuses on Jesus as a person.

Released daily via email to over 60,000 subscribers across the globe, every devotional pairs Scripture with art, poetry and music, offering a multi-sensory journey through the life and ministry of Jesus. Dr. Barry H. Corey, president of Biola, encourages participants to encounter Jesus, whether that might be comforting, difficult or something in between.

“In the stories throughout Mark's pages, we watch others interact with Jesus, perplexed, distressed, enamored, mesmerized, moved, healed, rebuked, comforted and transformed by him,” said Corey in the project’s introduction video. “If you have spent any time reading the Bible and in your relationship with Christ, I'm sure you find yourself relating to some of these reactions.”

This year’s project allows participants to ask questions about the personhood of Jesus and to be illuminated by Scripture as they learn about his life. Corey is encouraging readers to respond by turning toward Jesus during the season of Lent.

“This Lent, I encourage you to turn toward Jesus, whether engaging with him feels like comfort or confrontation,” said Corey. “Encounter him in his holiness as fully God, and encounter him as incarnate, plainly revealed as fully man. Encounter him as powerful, the King conquering our most feared enemies of illness and disaster and violence and demons and sin and death. Encounter him as gentle, lowly, and unexpected. Encounter him as a servant who submitted himself to death for our sakes, giving us new life. And encounter him as the risen, victorious King that he is, reigning gloriously, the one to whom every knee will one day bow, every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.”

Through the Lent Project, Biola seeks to guide subscribers into a deeper understanding of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and the hope found in His resurrection. Participants can subscribe to receive daily devotionals by email by visiting the Lent Project website. Biola’s Lent Project Week 1 is available on the YouVersion Bible app and new installments will become available every week.

About the Biola University Center for Christianity, Culture and the Arts: The Center for Christianity, Culture and the Arts seeks to explore the relationship between faith and the arts by fostering dialogue among artists and scholars, producing research on the theological dimensions of modern and contemporary art, and promoting a deeper understanding of the Christian artistic tradition. Through events, online resources and scholarship, the Center cultivates conversations at the intersection of theology and contemporary art.

Written by Sarah Dougher, media relations specialist. For more information, email media.relations@biola.edu.