Dear U Park family,
2025 is nearly one-sixth over, and around church it’s gone fast. Over the past 8 weeks, we’ve held food and supply drives for Metro Caring, sponsored by our United Women in Faith; we’ve put together a winter clothing drive for indigent patients at Porter Hospital. On Saturday, we’ll finish our strategic plan for our ministry over the next five years or so. Next week our Shrove Tuesday pancake Supper will kick off Lent with a fund raiser for youth summer mission trips, and we’ll follow it the next day with Ash Wednesday services at noon and 6:00. In March our youth will have their first opportunity of the year to go on one of those service trips. In our children’s ministry, Bethany is hard at work planning and organizing Vacation Bible School for this summer. With all this activity going on at church, it may seem almost hypocritical for me to suggest slowing down. But during Lent, I hope we can.
Classically, Lent is the time of the church year focused on fasting and repentance. Too often throughout Christian history, that emphasis on repentance has become a kind of guilt-fest, a time to beat ourselves up for our shortcomings. I don’t think that kind of self-punishment is helpful, and I prefer to think of Lent as a time of reflection and intensified spiritual practice, aimed at developing deeper relationship with self, others, and God.
In Greek, the word usually translated “repentance” is made up of two words, one meaning “beyond” or “above” or “higher,” “changed,” and the second meaning “mind” or “thought.” So the repentance of Lent is nuanced – it could translate very literally as “after thought” or “changed mind,” among other things. Repentance involves rethinking our behavior and our habits of heart. Throughout Lent this year, I’ll focus on how our “after-thinking” can lead us to live differently as we discover God in our mundane, flesh and blood lives.
I hope to see you at church on Sunday, and I hope you’re enjoying this break from winter weather!
Grace and Peace,
Andy