messagemar2007

JUST A REMINDER: Don't forget the Easter breakfast is now the Palm Sunday breakfast, to be help on April 1st.
Also a reminder ... it is Lent. I say this because it is easy to celebrate Pam Sunday and Easter, but not so easy to
observe Lent. On Palm Sunday, the children get to go on an egg hunt and hold palm branches during the church
service. We wave our palm branches and celebrate. And we all love Easter Sunday! It is a happy time, with
flowers, new clothes, and hopefully, Spring will be in the air.

But sometimes I think it is too easy for us to focus only on the high points of Palm Sunday and Easter, without really
taking the time to walk with Jesus through the darkness of Good Friday. We began our Lenten journey on Ash
Wednesday by receiving ashes on our foreheads and now we must follow it through to Easter.,

I have heard the passage in 2 Chronicles 7:14 quoted a lot:...'if my people who are called by may name humble
themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will
forgive their sin and heal their land." This usually is quoted in the context of wanting renewal in the church, and the
prayer is interpreted as intercessory prayer for others. But a careful reading of the passage will reveal that the prayer
that is called for there is not intercessory prayer for others; it is penitential prayer for the faithful, for us. It is not to
call for others to repent ; it is a call for us, god's people, to repent. It is our land that needs healed, it is our wicked
ways from which we need to turn. We are the ones who need to seek God's face.

Perhaps during this Lenten season we should take some time to put shes on our heads, to come before God with a
new humility that is willing to confess, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner." Maybe we should be willing to come
before god ourselves and plead, "Lord, in my hand no price I bring; simple to the cross i cling."

Again, Lent begins in ashes and it journeys through darkness,. It is a spiritual pilgrimage that I am convinced we all
must make for genuine spiritual renewal to come. That might put us in a position to hear God in ways that we have
not heard Him in al long time. And it may be the beginning of a healing for which we have so longed.

Wishing you all a meaningful Lent.

Pastor Steltzer