Lent 1

On Wednesday (Ash Wednesday) we began the season of Lent.  This is the 40-day period (not counting the six Sundays, you can still eat chocolate and ice cream on Sundays) before Easter. It is traditionally a time for reflecting on what it means to follow Christ, and resolving to live as a follower of Christ in the world. 

We traditionally begin Lent by having an ash cross signed on our forehead; Ash is a biblical sign of repentance (choosing to turn your life around). Traditionally this ash is made from burning last year's Palm Sunday palm branches, symbolising how our plans often end in ashes.

In the early Church this was preparation for being initiated, or re-initiated, into the Christian community at Easter. 

Lent provides a time to ask the big questions: who are we; whose are we; what is ours to do? It is a time we can develop habits and rhythms that allow us to pay attention to these questions, and to give space for the heart of God to touch and shape our hearts. It is a time to repent of all those habits that stop us paying attention to these questions, and that distract us from God’s activity in the world around us. It is a time where we can put aside our plans and hopes which so often led to ash, and place ourselves in God’s profound love.

To be free we must be able

to give up what is old,

and so answer God’s will

today and tomorrow.

It is hard, church of Jesus, to be Christian,

for we always have to fight on two fronts:

against temptation of conforming

to the prevailing patterns of the world

against the temptation of fashioning Jesus

after our own image.

Ernst Kasemann