Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent… unless you count Shrove Tuesday (the day we eat pancakes for dinner :P)
As a church we just finished a month-long fast in January, but Lent is a 40-day fast that the Global Church participates in together. The premise of Ash Wednesday is to bring our attention back towards the cross in a new way. We consider the fact that from dust we were made and to dust we will one day return…
The frailty of life likely means something different to each of us now than it ever has before. Just when we were beginning to maybe sense an end to our battle against Covid, for the first time since 1945, war has been declared in Europe. Of course, countless other wars have also been waged since then in other parts of the world and unspeakable damage has been done.
Life is unbelievably short and our world continues to remind us of that.
As children of God, we must remember that this is not our inheritance! War and famine, drought and destruction are not the “hope and future” we have been promised by God.
And yet, there is something incredibly rich that begins to transform within us when we choose to pause and remember our humanity.
Life as we now know it will not last forever, and yet we were not created to live on this planet forever.
We do have a hope and a future and all of it has been made available to us through Christ.
I encourage you to consider what it looks like for you to shift your gaze towards the cross this year during Lent.
A lot can happen in 40 days, especially when our focus is on Jesus.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11