PJ’s Page
As I write this Ash Wednesday is a mere two weeks away. Lent always sneaks up on me, perhaps because the culture doesn’t offer any cues that it is time to prepare. There are no ASH WEDNESDAY MATTRESS SALES or Lent candy or Lenten greeting cards. Absent any cues, we find ourselves with ashes on our foreheads.
Almost every year at this time I write about the practice of “giving up” something for Lent…chocolate or dessert or Facebook seem to be among the favorites. Somehow, though, I, personally, am never edified by such sacrifice. I find that I experience the piety of Lent through the addition of a spiritual practice. Perhaps additional time in prayer, or weekly mid-week worship, or daily Scripture reading would be some options. One year I named the people in my life who had or were presently difficult, with whom I had a disagreement or who had been mean to me in high school. Even the exercise of naming those difficult relationships was helpful to my ability to experience the freedom that comes with forgiveness. And then I prayed for them, by name, throughout the season of Lent. I learned that it is almost impossible to hold a grudge or harbor bad feelings when you are praying for someone daily.
I don’t know where many of those folks are these days or what they are up to, so it wasn’t like I was praying for them in a specific way. But I was praying for their wholeness, for peace, and naming them as children of God. I prayed for them God’s perfect peace – shalom.
I hope you will join us on Wednesday evenings in this Lenten season. We will share a simple supper of soup and bread, beginning at 5:30 and ending at 6:15, when we gather for worship. (See description elsewhere in this newsletter.) Our Ash Wednesday worship is at 7pm. And don’t forget our special Seahawks themed Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper on Mardi Gras, March 4th.
In the meantime, I am still considering what I will take up in this season of Lent, to remind me in deep and true ways of the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus. I am reminded of the words of the theologian Walter Bruggemann who prays that spaces would be created in our lives where we might ponder the suffering of Christ. Where we might imagine how it is that One so perfect would sacrifice everything on our behalf, imperfect people that we are. I hope to seek and find such spaces – space for prayer, space for reflection, space for worship, space for quiet, space in the midst of life, for Jesus.
Keeping a Holy Lent, with you~
Pastor Julie