A Letter from the Interim Pastor

Looking out the window on bare branches against a grey and rainy sky, it seems a fitting scene for a penitential season of the church's year. Lent is a time of forty days from Ash Wednesday leading up to Easter, recalling Jesus' temptation of forty days in the wilderness as he began his ministry. If you were to count the days from Ash Wednesday to Easter, you would get more than 40 days, because the Sundays during Lent are not counted as part of Lent itself. They are considered days that recall the resurrection of Christ, foreshadowing Easter. That may be good news if you decide (as has often been the practice in Christian observance of this season) to give something up for Lent, perhaps chocolate, say. Given that the Sundays are not part of Lent, you could indulge on those days, and still contend that you had given up chocolate for Lent.

This year, Lent comes early because the date of Easter (March 23) is nearly the earliest it can ever be. So we are now preparing for Easter with Christmas only just past, with the Christmas tree still languishing on the back porch for some....

And so we enter a penitential season, a time of reflection. I remember going to a Yom Kippur service with friends some years ago, and being moved by the feeling of that evening. There was a long prayer of confession, allowing those gathered to confess all our failings and shortcomings, all the ways we had let each other down or not lived up to our best hopes and beliefs. Lent beckons us to that kind of reflection, to risk slowing down long enough to see if there are obstacles that keep us from hearing Christ's voice and following fully in his ways.

To deepen your experience of the Lenten season, you are invited to take part in a Lenten study series on Wednesday evenings, beginning with a soup supper at 6 p.m. The study draws on Michael Lindvall's book Pausing on the Road to Jerusalem.

As we travel through Lent, these words from the book of Hebrews may guide our way:
“let us lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely,” and run with perseverance the race that is set before us, “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”

Yours in faith,

Audrey Schindler