Tag: Christianity

Beginning Lent

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“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” Mark 1:12-13

Last week I looked at my calendar and was surprised (yet again) that Ash Wednesdayash is virtually upon us! Easter is coming quite early this year and falls on March 31st and this means that Lent begins quite early as well. February 13th, to be exact.

Lent is a season that means different things at different times for each of us. Like many complex things in the church and the life of faith, saying what the season of Lent is actually about is not a simple task. It is symbolic of a lot of 40s that we find in scripture but one most easily connected to this church season is Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness immediately after his baptism. Immediately after being baptized by John the Baptizer and receiving the Holy Spirit, that same Spirit drives him into the wilderness. It is in that wilderness that he struggles with the devil and the many temptations presented to him. Jesus defeats the devil, at least for the time being, by exercising his faith. In other words, he relies upon his faith for the answers to all the temptations presented to him.

It has been said that Lent can be a time when we exercise our faith, too. Whether or not we give up something or take up a new discipline between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, we can ultimately think of it as finding a way to exercise or work out our faith life in order to make it stronger. Our faith is a gift from God, just like our bodies, our lives and everything we have, and using it well is a very good thing to do!

So what will you do to exercise your faith this Lent? May God bless us all as we journey together through this season and may God strengthen our faith!

All You Need Is Love

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Epiphany C4   1 Corinthians 13:1-13      

So what do we think of love? A lot of what we think of love comes from movies and stories. Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was locked away in the highest room of the tallest tower in a dragon guarded castle awaiting the arrival of her true love, a handsome prince who would slay the dragon and whisk her off to happily ever after.

They always start like that, don’t they? It never seems to begin with once upon a time there was a plain girl, quite ordinary and unremarkable, who looked into the mirror one morning at the bruises on her arms and decided that she could no longer endure the abuse she experienced in her family, and turned to her closet to pack a bag so she could leave the only home she’d ever known to live on the street in order to survive.

Or, once upon a time there was an overweight middle aged man sitting in his office, so filled with regret from his unfulfilled life, broken marriage and the deep, gnawing emptiness in his soul that he was once again, as he did every day, drowning out these thoughts and feelings with massive amounts of alcohol.

Or, once upon a time there was a man with scars and marks from his fearsome and violent life, lying in his prison cell with a future as blank and hopeless as the filthy ceiling at which he stared and who knew with all of his heart that there was no one to blame for where he was but himself.

Or even, once upon a time there was a slightly confused elderly lady who wasn’t sure of a lot of things these days, but lovingly recalled her memories of a life once filled with people, all long since gone, who sat alone in her living room wishing with all her might that someone would come by and talk to her.

And yet all of God’s love stories begin that way.

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Want to hear more? Join us in worship Sunday mornings at 11am. You can find directions to the church here. This sermon can be read in full at Shepherdess Writes.