One Great Hour of Sharing

We will be taking up our annual collection on Easter Sunday for the one great hour of sharing.  this year will be especially important as the resources collected will go to our denomination's work in Haiti as well as other needy spots around the world.  Pick up a coin bank to fill over the next forty days, or wait for Easter Sunday to give to this important aspect of our worship life.  Jesus asked peter, Do you love me?  If so, then feed my sheep.  Help us feed Jesus' sheep around the world.

From the Pastor's Desk

Greetings to you in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,

 Another season of Lent has come upon us.  It seems like we just finished Advent no too long ago, and we just took down our trees and our lights.  Now we find ourselves in another period of the church year where we prepare ourselves for the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord.  Like Advent we all have those traditions which we do during Lent.  Some of those traditions might include giving something up, maybe fasting on Fridays, maybe reading a 40 day devotional, maybe even trying to pray more often and for longer periods.

 But the question remains what are we doing all of this preparing for? 

 We are preparing ourselves for the Passion and Re-birth of our Lord Jesus.  We are preparing ourselves for hearing about how God was crucified to redeem us.  We are preparing ourselves for the days when God acted to heal and restore the whole human creation. 

 How does giving up chocolate prepare us for the Passion?  How does fasting prepare us for the cross?  How does taking up a new spiritual devotion prepare us for the brutal suffering of the crucifixion?  These things don’t prepare us for Holy Week; these things are signs of the changes going on in our hearts.  Our hearts are the problem, therefore any preparations needs to start there.  Our hearts are the root of all sin, therefore whatever changes need to be made, need to be made there.  Rend your hearts, not your garments, the prophet Joel says to the people of God. 

 If you give anything up this Lent, then let it be sin.  Give up your hate, your bigotry, your injustice!  If you fast this Lent, let it be fasting from material things that your heart might feast not on steak or lobster, but on the body and blood of Jesus Christ!  If you take up a spiritual discipline, let it not be so that you can say you did it to other people, but take up those things so that you put yourself at the feet of the perfect teacher Jesus Christ.

 Lent is a time of preparation, but we are not to just prepare our outsides, but we are to prepare our insides as well.  We all know about the fish fry’s, the groups which meet to read Purpose Driven Life, and the missed meals on Fridays, but what we don’t know or too often forget, is that we also are to return to the LORD our God with all our heart.  If all we prepare is our stomachs, or our minds, then we are forgetting the most important part of preparation, the human heart.  That is where the darkness lies, and that is where the light of the world must enter in.  So this Lent let your insides look like your outsides, and let your outsides look like your insides.  This Lent Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.  Who knows? He may turn and have pity.  This Lent give God your heart, not just your stomachs!

 In Christ,

Rev. Mark