From the Pastor

From Pastor Kristin…

I used to love Lent. Seriously, Lent was my favorite season of the church year. (Lent? It’s the 40 days before Easter, in which we walk with Jesus as he heads to the cross. It began on February 22nd – Ash Wednesday – and will extend through April 1st – Palm Sunday.)

My love of Lent might have something to do with the fact that I tend to get SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, from lack of sunlight during the winter, in addition to carrying the tired stress of Christmas into January and February.

So when Lent rolls around, I usually welcome it with a sigh of relief, as if we’ve all been given permission to be a bit melancholy, to look introspectively, and to actually mourn the troubles of our broken and fragile world. Not to mention letting go of that that façade of happiness and confidence that we put on so often it becomes like a second skin. But not this year.

I want to embrace the season of Lent, knowing that the penitential nature of lent can help us be a bit more honest with ourselves, and enables us to really celebrate Easter when it arrives. Kathleen Norris – a great writer on faith, doubt, and disbelief – tells of partying with a group of monks the night before Easter, saying, “maybe these [monks] can enjoy Easter because they also observe Lent well enough to be happy to see it go” (The Cloister Walk).

But this year, actually observing Lent seems like one more probable failure. One more thing I should do or be. And, well, we’ve all got enough of those weighing us down.

Being that this is the church newsletter – have you noticed the one word, the one person, the one being I haven’t yet mentioned? The one you probably assume I’m “supposed” to be talking about, instead of telling you all about me. Maybe that’s the trouble we get into with Lent as well. We tend to make it all about ourselves and our failures, rather than about God revealed in and through Jesus’ journey to the cross.

“If focused upon ourselves and our sins, Lent becomes a misguided exercise that magnifies our greatest obstacle to a true relationship with God: the belief that the relationship depends entirely on us” (David Miller, The Lutheran Magazine, February 2012).

Our theme for Lent this is year is “Praying at the Cross”. It is an invitation not to work so hard at lent, but to let lent work in you. To let God’s grace be enough. To sit with God, at the foot of the cross and let God work in you, in your heart, in your body, and in your life.

Because truthfully, lent isn’t about you. It’s about God. Going to the cross. For you.