From the Pastoral perspective:

Dear Lenten People of God!

Lent 2010 began this past month with the observance of Ash Wednesday, February 17. Lent is the Church Year’s “springtime.” Lent is an old Anglo-Saxon word that literally means “spring.” It is a time for cleansing and renewal and rebirth. It is about getting back to basics … like the basics of sin and grace and faith.

Lent is a time for looking at and pruning our faith so that it grows. One of my favorite writers, Rev. Frederick Buechner, in a devotional booklet has this to say about our Lenten journey (excerpts):

In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year’s days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask what it means to be themselves. When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore? Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember? If this is the last day of your life, what would you do with it? To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.

May God bless your faith journey during this season of Lent with His gift of faith, hope and a resurrection promise for you!

God‘s blessings,
Rev. Dan Deutsch, Pastor

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