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Lenten Journey 2019

Posted by Erik Hall on

Everyone knows that Easter is the most important and most celebrated Christian holiday of the year. We are not just celebrating the peace and joy of Jesus’ birth and God’s presence with us, like we do at Christmas. We are celebrating the reality that God loved the world so much that Jesus would actually sacrifice his life for us. When Jesus chose to live a life of rejection and hardship, when Jesus stood against the evil of Romans and religious leaders, when Jesus was wrongfully imprisoned and executed, he showed how deep God’s promise, to heal the world of the sickness of sin and evil, actually went.      

But, the power of Easter doesn’t end there. God’s power and grace, God’s commitment and love, don’t just promise us healing and freedom from the sin and evil that drags us down in this life…   but also the assurance that even the worst the world can inflict, death, is not the ending of our story. God promises us an eternity of peace and joy. When Jesus is resurrected on Easter morning, God shows the world that LIFE, not death, is God’s will and plan for us.      

Lent, in the tradition of the church, is the spiritual road to Easter. It is a long and challenging journey in which we are encouraged to ‘dig deep’  and open ourselves to God, especially those parts of our lives that we know aren’t spiritually healthy. God WILL meet us in those places. On this journey, we reflect upon the sacrifice that Christ made for us on HIS journey to the cross, and to Easter. We renew our commitment to the spiritual disciplines of daily Scripture reading, daily prayer, daily acts of kindness, and even daily ‘fasting’ (either REALLY giving up food items or meals or giving up something we are used to having) as a practice to draw our attention to our dependence on God for forgiveness, healing, and redemption. These six weeks leading up to Easter (Lent) begins this Wednesday with Ash Wednesday and concludes on the Saturday before Easter. It is on this journey that Christians have, traditionally, done this hard work of the soul.

“Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people” (Luke 5:10). These were the words Jesus spoke to his first disciples who, in response, dropped everything to follow him. Jesus extends that same offer to all people: follow me. Two simple words that invite us to discover life in its fullest, love in its deepest, faith in its most courageous, and remake our lives in His image. Let us join together here at St. Andrew for this Lenten journey to follow Jesus.