Life in the Fast Lane

Ash Wednesday.
Lent already?
I know, right? What happened? Another year.
Boom!
 
Get your ashes and the Lord’s Supper (well, sort of…) on Zoom tonight at 7pm with us and Cokesbury & Fairmount United Methodist Churches. Pastor Lynn and I are leading on Zoom. Here’s the link. Have some bread or crackers and juice or water ready to serve yourself communion. And, if you want to do your own ashes, you can use the soot of a candle you’ve blown out, or olive oil to symbolically impose the ashes!
 
Let’s do a little worship tonight and set the right tone for Lent! You’ll be in and out in short order. Then you can spend the rest of the evening wondering if you smudged your forehead. Just sayin…
 
No matter how you’ve chosen to observe Lent, that part tends to be an individual thing. But, it’s also something we do together, corporately, in community. A former moderator of PC(USA), Bruce Reyes Chow, reminds us of it today. Community.
 
Although certain aspects of Lent, and any Lenten discipline, require self-reflection and self-awareness, we must not enter that endeavor believing that it is only about our individual experiences. For we are reminded over and over and over again that the journey of life, the walk to the cross, and the experience of resurrection is a communal one—together we often turn on one another and away from God; and together we can experience forgiveness, repentance, and new life; and together we can be the best of who God intends.
 
Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
 
-- Isaiah 58:6 (NRSV)
 
Come tonight and let’s do this—Lent.
Life in the fast lane--
Fasting, forgiving, repenting, and being the best of who God intends.
​All we can do is the best we can do…let’s do this!
 
Grace and peace,
Scott