Saturday, April 17, 2010

Refreshment

(*Disclaimer, a little late but better late than never!)

This Lenten season was my first time officially celebrating Lent, thanks to our new(ish) church. When I had mentioned to a few people we were "celebrating" lent I got a few comments of confusion: "Isn't Lent only for Catholics?" It isn't. Lent means "Spring" and is a season of renewal and refreshment as we focus on the coming death and Resurrection of Christ. Our church this year took 5 weeks and went over spiritual disciplines: Bible reading, Prayer, Examining, Sabbath, and Service. The thing that I really liked was the church had Bible readings each day (which were short enough to be read in about 5 minutes or less) that specifically focused on the theme for the week. The readings were amazing and really correlated so well to that week's topic. The final week-Holy Week-had readings that were a lot longer and had a reading from a Psalm, Old Testament, New Testament/Letter and a Gospel reading each day. And each day's reading focused on what happened that day of the week leading up to Christ's death (Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, etc.) I was actually able to do most of the readings during Lent and so when it ended, it truly was a time of renewal and refreshment for me. I literally walked away from Easter morning feeling as though I had been on a retreat or at a spa and had been spiritually and emotionally refreshed the previous 6 weeks. So my first time of celebrating Lent was a wonderful experience.

1 comment:

~ The Coleman 5 said...

Thanks for sharing this. I am so glad that you are at our church and I look forward to getting to know you better. That is so cool that you were able to really get into the Lenten season this year.