Thoughts from Pastor Gordon - How is it with Your Soul?
In every Christian’s life, spiritual vitality or passion wanes over time. This is true in all aspects of our life.
In marriage, we slowly find that the fire diminishes if we’re not intentional about revival in our love life. This happens in friendships. It happens with our jobs—we call it burnout.
In every part of our life we need revival from time to time. If you have plants, either inside or outside, when you remember to water it, the plant looks healthy and vibrant. But after a few days without water, it begins to wilt. Two weeks without water and its leaves become dry, brown, and brittle.
In our spiritual life we have seasons when we are blooming and bearing fruit, when our vitality is high. But when we neglect our spiritual life, we begin to wilt. When we have prolonged periods of inattention to the spiritual life, our faith goes dormant. We may go through the motions of Christian life, but the vitality is gone.
What spiritual practices do you employ for your own life? Are there times when your faith has ebbed, times when you have become too busy to tend to your personal spiritual life. I think this is true for each of us. Perhaps this is one of those times for you. If your spiritual life were a flowering plant, is it currently blooming and fully alive, or is it wilting and perhaps even dying?
We are approaching Lent, a season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday. This year we will begin the observation of lent with Ash Wednesday on March 6, when we will have a worship service beginning at 7:00 PM.
Lent comes from the Anglo-saxon word lencten, which means "spring." The forty days represents the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring the temptation of Satan and preparing to begin his ministry.
Lent is a time of repentance, fasting and preparation for the coming of Easter. It is a time of self-examination and reflection. In the early church, Lent was a time to prepare new converts for baptism. Today, Christians focus on their relationship with God, often choosing to give up something or to volunteer and give of themselves for others.
Sundays in Lent are not counted in the forty days because each Sunday represents a "mini-Easter" and the reverent spirit of Lent is tempered with joyful anticipation of the Resurrection.
Will Lent 2019 be the same for you, will you observe the same spiritual practice, or will you incorporate something new? If your spiritual life were a flowering plant, is it currently blooming and fully alive, or is it wilting and perhaps even dying?