Today we begin our Lenten journey.  We enter a new season by marking ourselves with ashes and remembering that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Ash Wednesday is a strange day. It is a hard day to explain and to hold. It is a day within the flow of the Christian year that forces us to make space to contemplate our own mortality. It is a day within the flow of the Christian year that is not about celebration but about making a shift, a shift that leads us into forty days of reflection, of slowing down, of letting go so that we are able to release and to joyously hold the gospel message when Easter morning arrives.  

Since August we have been reflecting on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. As the new year began, we were challenged to discern our next faithful step as individual disciples and as a church family. Each Sunday we lifted stories of the next faithful steps of characters in the Bible story. As we enter Lent, we will take our first steps by marking our foreheads with ashes and then journey together each Sunday looking at individuals whose face to face encounters with Jesus helped them understand what it means to make a shift, to release, so that they could joyously receive the gospel message.

I hope you have taken time to discern your next faithful step. I hope you have made plans to bring your next faithful step discipleship card to worship this Sunday or plan to fill it out online. I pray that while Ash Wednesday is a strange day, a hard day to hold, that our Ash Wednesday service is a space of rest and release for you. Finally, I pray that the season of Lent will be the space you need to make a shift, a shift you are being called to make, or simply a shift you feel you need to make so that we are all able to joyously hold the gospel message when Easter morning arrives.

See you at 6 pm tonight to begin the journey with a service of song, scripture, silence, and imposition of ashes.  

Click here to fill out a next faithful step discipleship card.
-Pastor Dawn  

For more information about The Happening upcoming dates of future Happenings, and to see how your youth may be involved, visit their website.