02-21-10
Bulletin Listen Watch video

Dear Friends,

The Season of Lent seems to have arrived sooner this year than in years past.  Indeed, just yesterday I saw a brown, forlorn Christmas tree sitting at a neighborhood curbside awaiting pick-up.  Unlike Christmas, which occurs on a fixed date each year, Easter’s arrival is determined by the date of the spring equinox (the first Sunday following the first full moon of spring).  The liturgical season that precedes Easter is called Lent – a forty-day season (excluding Sundays) of “fasting” and “penitence” that ends on the Saturday before Easter.  “Lent” comes from the Old English word, Lenten, which means spring – a reference not only to Mother Nature, but to that season of the soul in which, after deliberate preparation and attention, we blossom in the full light of God’s grace.

With our observance of Ash Wednesday this week, our Lenten journey has begun.  Our gospel story from Luke this Sunday sends us immediately into the wilderness with Jesus where, for forty days and forty nights, we learn to live without the comforts, distractions, and addictions of our everyday lives.  Lent is intended to be very much like a wilderness experience, where we learn what it’s like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what, for better or worse, we can supply for ourselves.

If you haven’t already done so, it’s not too late to “give something up” for Lent.  Nothing is too small to give up.  All you have to do is set it aside and ask yourself, “How does it feel not to have it?  How, by giving it up, might that void become for me an impetus to grow personally – in my relationship with God, in my understanding of myself, in my encounters with strangers, enemies, and those whom I love?”

Join us this Sunday as we head out to the wilderness with Jesus — learning to live without so that we can be sure that we’re indeed even living at all.

See you Sunday,

Rev. Mark