Services
Ash Wednesday Services–March 5
Maundy Thursday Services–April 17
Good Friday Services–April 18
Services will be at 5:00 and 6:30pm
Childcare will be provided at the 5:00pm service only
Morning Prayer
From Ash Wednesday to Good Friday, we will gather for Morning Prayers Monday-Friday from 7:30-8:00am in the prayer room.
Lent is a forty-day journey of preparation, self-denial, repentance, and renewal. It begins with Ash Wednesday and continues through Holy Saturday, when we await the burst of resurrection life on Easter Sunday. The Lent journey echoes Israel’s forty years in the wilderness and Jesus’ forty days of testing in the wilderness. The wilderness has a way of softening our hearts and quieting the noise outside us and within us. It’s an opportunity to come back home to God, to deepen our attentiveness to Him. It isn’t for the spiritually self-satisfied. Every ordinary disciple of Jesus is encouraged to set aside this time to fan the flame of God’s grace.
The Lenten period of time is patterned after several events in Scripture. Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and Jesus’ 40 days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness. Each of these “forties,” focused as they are on suffering, testing, repentance, and Spiritual warfare, inform our Lenten contemplation on the glory of the Cross-Shattered Christ who saves the world.
“Lent is only worth observing if we do so in light of the coming Easter joy; but without proper observance of Lent, Easter celebrations are cheapened and depleted of their power. In our self-centered culture, Lent takes on special importance. You will know you have kept Lent well if you come to the end of its forty-day journey with a deeper faith in Christ crucified and a greater joy in the power of the risen Christ.”
Adjust your schedule to participate in the Holy Week Schedule and Easter Sunday.
Holy Week and Easter
In a fast, we deny ourselves the necessities of food and drink in order to experience a physical lack that points us to our fundamental need for Christ. Sundays always celebrate the resurrection and therefore are never fast days. During Lent, we participate in two types of fasting.
The Lenten Fast involves abstaining, for the entirety of Lent, from some food or drink we normally enjoy (such as meat, caffeine, alcohol, etc.). The low grade hunger we feel points us daily to Jesus, the true giver of joy and satisfaction.
A Total Fast is practiced a the beginning and end of Lent. On Ash Wednesday, we fast for the entire day. The second total fast begins on teh evening of Maundy Thursday until breakfast after the Easter Sunrise Service or Holy Communion later that morning. During the total fast, we experience real hunger pains, allowing us to turn our attention to our longing and hunger for Christ.
For the entirety of Lent, set aside a time each day for Scripture reading and prayer. Our Lenten Devotional will guide us as a Church, to read and pray our way through the entire gospel of Matthew over the Lenten season together.
We all are weak. We need the external reminders—symbols, signs—of the season of Lent. Our culture will not give them to us because Lent is not conducive to a consumeristic culture. Find ways to cultivate an atmosphere of Lent in your home.
