Skip to main content

This Season

Yesterday (Ash Wednesday) marked the beginning of Lent, a season that calls us to return again to God. It is a season that bids us seek repentance from our sinful nature.  Lent is a season that begs us to grow in our faith. The 40 days of Lent are a season of searching the depths of our spirit and soul to mend the brokenness in our relationships; with one another and with God.

This Season,
Mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend.
Dismiss suspicion, and replace it with trust.
Write a love letter. Share some treasure.
Give a soft answer. Encourage youth.
Manifest your loyalty in word and deed.
Keep a promise. Find the time. Forgo a grudge.
Forgive an enemy. Listen.
Apologize if you were wrong.
Try to understand. Flout envy.
Examine your demands on others.
Think first of someone else. Appreciate.
Be kind. Be gentle. Laugh a little.
Laugh a little more.
Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice.
Decry complacency. Express your gratitude.
Say a prayer. Welcome a stranger.
Gladden the heart of a child.
Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the Earth.
Speak your love.
Speak it again. Speak it still once again.
                                                            -Anonymous

We should find strength and comfort in the knowledge that this season, like other seasons of our lives, can cause us to become better Christians-if we allow God in. In this season of Lent return again to the foot of the cross. Remember from ash you were created to ash you will return, the 40 days of lent bind the ashes and brokenness together restoring you to the Whole God-created person you have always been. Because of the grace and power this season bring return again to God and find restoration and forgiveness.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Changing of the Seasons

"I don't like this cold..." SERIOUSLY not even two weeks ago some of the same people who are saying this were more recently saying "I can't stand this heat, I wish it was cooler." You got your wish, quit complaining!  Why is it we are never happy in the moment? It is too hot, too cold, too boring, too silly, too dry, too wet, too overwhelming, not overwhelming enough...the list continues. As I sit in my office this afternoon, reflecting on the past few week's events (funerals, Sunday school starting, children and youth activities starting, countless meetings, and moments(very few moments) of silence) I hear in the back of my mind a voice not my own reciting the beginning of Ecclesiastes 3     1  For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:  2  a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;  3  a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to buil

Is This Love?

I don't follow politics as much as I should... but I have been following, entirely second hand, what happened in North Carolina and President Obama’s statement supporting same-sex marriage and I wonder…how did we get here? I am in the midst of working on my sermon for Sunday and I don’t know where to go because I don’t know how we got here. Maybe you are asking “where is here?” Here May 11, 2012 in a society that feels like total anarchy. 236 years ago (give or take) some people who were feeling oppressed and alienated sought to make a better life where it would be understood that ALL were created equal. Of course that first claim came with underlying unspoken exceptions- ALL were created equal- except women, children, people of different skin tone, and more recently people who define and qualify love differently than others. I admittedly do not know much more than I did as a senior in high school about politics. Political Science was a classed I HAD to take in order to gra

From Behind the Communion Table

Over the past 10 years of pastoral ministry I have had the privilege to sit behind several Communion Tables. To preside at the Lord’s Supper is, I think, one of the most extraordinary things a minister can lead for her congregation. In lifting and break the bread and lifting and pouring the cup, reminding all who are gathered what Christ did for each of them, a minister is given the opportunity to look out into the heart of the congregation. In those moments after the Elders have distributed the trays to the Diaconate (in my tradition we pass trays filled with pieces of bread and cups of juice) I have been given the special opportunity to look everyone participating in worship. Over the years I have seen couples holding hands, children kneeling on the floor coloring a page from worship totes, mothers and grandmothers holding new babies, and others siting like statues eyes closed deep in prayer…or maybe they are asleep. I don’t watch the congregation in a creepy “I’m watching you” k