Lent

Hey friends!

This year, March marks the beginning of the Lenten season. As Dr. Kate Bowler puts it, “[Lent is] the time when we get to stop pretending everything is fine and admit how hard life can be—and how God meets us right in the middle of it.”

On Ash Wednesday, even as we come to God’s table of grace and mercy via the sacrament of communion, we will also acknowledge our mortality. We will acknowledge that, without God’s breath of life, we are but dust (Gen. 2:7) and to dust we will return.

As we face the reality of our dustness, we face the reality that everything else we have comes from God. And yet, we have all too often turned away and strayed from what is right, just, and good according to God. That is when we get to stop pretending. That is when we get to tell it like it is, and admit how hard this life can be. God can handle our honesty. And God continues to extend grace.

The season of Lent is a time for prayer, maybe fasting, and repentance for all the ways we have strayed, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Even as the scriptures of this season call out our rebellions and urge us to repent, there is hope on the horizon.

In the words of Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, “repentance, from the heart, still leads to redemption. God’s grace waits in eager hope and expectation.”

We are human. We have fallen short of the glory of God. We will continue to fall short, to stray, and to rebel. But God is love. God extends to us additional chances to strive toward God. God will continue to offer grace.

In life’s hardship and our own shortcomings, may this season of Lent be a meaningful, honest, enriching, and transformative time of movement toward God. May the extension of divine grace form us evermore into the image of Jesus. May our repentance bring redemption. May our redemption bring transformation and betterment. May our known dustness encourage us to lean further into God’s breath of life.

See you in church,
​Pastor Julia