Get Your Lent On!

Okay, so it's been a while again...my bad. The past week and a half have been rather busy preparing for Lent, a sermon for this Sunday, as well as preparing for some upcoming Bible studies. As well as spending a lot of time with "someone."
So, Lent is a great reminder for us on a lot of different levels! Some of us give up something for Lent, our Catholic brothers and sisters give up red meat on Fridays (some would go as far as to say that you should only eat fish for meat) and have a fish fry at church each Friday night, some include days of fasting and nights of reflecting and eating, and many other different traditions. If you go to www.newadvent.org, you can find the whole history of Lent that the Catholic church puts out. And Lent is truly a man-made tradition. In some circles of Christianity, if it's man-made then it's bad...which is quite the oxymoron if you ask me- because you'd have to simply look at their worship styles or choice in dress or whatever and you could easily find a man-made element in their worship. But a part from that, is the tradition of Lent so bad? Hardly.
Lent is a great 40-day season in the church year to help us prepare for Easter. It is a time of reflecting on what Christ did for us- his suffering and death. The word "Lent" has many different backgrounds, in Old English it would come from "lencten" meaning "lengthen," in German it would have the from the root word "Lenz," which means spring.
For most of the tradition of Lent, the 40 days are used to represent and reflect upon the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness. During this time Jesus prayed, fasted, and was tempted. (Matthew 4:1-11) So we are implored to spend time fasting, praying, and almsgiving. It is also a time of repentance as we look to Good Friday.
As in the explaination given on why we celebrate Lent from our service bulletin last night, here's why we still continue this tradition: "It is importnat that we, as Christians, remember that we cannot do anything through fasting, giving up something, or doing good works to earn God's forgiveness or love. Lent is all about what Christ came to do for us--to save us. He gave up His life, to pay the penalty for our sins, so that we can live forever. His amazing love for us is the focus of Lent." Lent is a blessed time to renew, reflect, and meditate on what Christ did for each and every single one of us: He took away our sins and in His love, saved us. We cannot jump too quickly to Easter, we must go through Good Friday first.

Are you giving up anything for Lent? I decided to give up two things: soda (pop, coke, soda pop, whatever) and facial hair. Well, the last one is a little ridiculous...

Last night at our Ash Wednesday service, we did a "dualing" sermon. It was great! I talked about doing one of those last year at my field work church in Saint Louis. But yeah, our Wednesday night sermon series for this Lent is "Were You There?" And we are looking at the Crucifixion from different angles, last night was the angle of the soldiers. Bill was the narrarator and I was one of the soldiers. We are doing this style of preaching at all the Wednesday night services.

This Sunday I'm preaching on desires...again. 2 weeks ago, I did a similar sermon, but with more of a positive spin on desire. This Sunday, I'm taking it the other way. Desires can be good, but they can easily become a monster and a grave temptation that can literally kill us! (James 1:15) We'll see how this sermon goes...it wasn't too easy to write, I'm sure that I'll make some changes to it as Sunday approaches.

Some good news is that one of my friends from the seminary, Jon, and his wife are expecting! It's great. What's even great is what one of my other friends, Matt, said about that: "I figure that we'll just rotate between video games and baby feeding - with some papers, etc. thrown in too." Matt and his wife had their son in October...maybe Jon and his wife will have a girl...could it be a match made in heaven??? We'll wait to see! I might have some more good news, on other fronts, coming out rather soon...keep posted for more details!