Lent

"Lent is a journey - a pilgrimage of sorts. Like most journeys worth the time, the Lenten one is not easy. The great themes of Lent represent areas of struggle and vulnerability for all people - mortality and death, temptation and resistance, repentance and holiness. But the Lenten journey is a necessary trek, one that leads us back to God, back to the basics, back to the spiritual realities of life. It calls on us to put to death the sin and indifference we have in our hearts toward God and our fellow persons. The classic location of this struggle is the desert or wilderness, the place of wandering, waiting, hunger, and temptation. The desert is also that unavoidable space between slavery and freedom, exile and homecoming - it connects the two and beckons us towards newness. This wilderness is not the end, but a part of the journey - a journey that leads the church into the darkness of Holy Week, through the god-forsakeness of Good Friday and the silence of Holy Saturday, and delivers us into the exuberance of Easter Sunday."