Pastor's Page
Pastor Sam and Abby
Greetings Friends!
Pastor Sam here, I pray everyone is staying safe and warm during this very mild end to the winter season. Already we see flowers beginning to burst from the ground as a chill remains in the air. Spring is not yet fully sprung, but I hope these final days of winter may be a blessing for us all.
One of the things that marks this strange time between the end of winter and the beginning of spring is the season of Lent. This section of the Christian year that started on Ash Wednesday (Feb. 22) and runs through Easter (April 9), and focuses on the practices of penitence. This season which mirrors the 40 days that Jesus spends in the wilderness in Matthew Chapter 4, calls us to a meditative, reflective, and penitent walk with the Lord. It is a season where many Christian traditions fast and take on extra forms of devotion above and beyond that which one typically does. It is a season which calls us to focus the entirety of our being on walking closer to Jesus by reflecting on the ways we have not been walking close to him in our life already. This is where our word penitence comes in, by reflecting and meditating on our own shortcomings and sins we hope to use this knowledge to better walk with God in the future. Just as the season of Lent ends with the triumphant celebration of Easter, so too should our periods of reflection and fasting end with a new spring of devotion and passion for living into the love of the Lord.
This is a season typically marked as a period of fasting, of going without the unnecessary things of life. Historically this meant giving up meat or dairy, more recently many people adjust their diets or other habits to abstain from luxuries or unnecessary things. But we of the faith must remember that the entire purpose of these fasting periods is not simply to go without, but to focus ourselves on the reflection that the season calls us to. This is a gravely needed thing in our world today, not in the sense that we need to eat less, but instead that we find ourselves in grave need of some genuine reflection. We as individuals, communities, and a nation find ourselves so often overwhelmed with negativity, conflict, and sin of all kinds. This fact should not call us to despair, but instead to a penitent attitude. This season should be a wake up call to our desperate need for real reflection and a real change that leads to a closer walk with God. So as wintery days come to a close and spring comes into greater bloom, I encourage each of us to seek after a similar blossoming of our own spiritual lives. Let us reflect on our shortcomings that we may walk ever closer to our lord Jesus, and live in ever greater love to God and to all our neighbors.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Sam Mitchell