Pastor's Corner
Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Joel 2:13
On February 22nd we will begin the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday. We begin the season wearing ashes, confessing we are nothing but “dust and to dust we will return.” How humbling for all of us. However, the penitential nature of this penitential season can quickly take a turn for the worse. Many people will start to make sure they don’t eat meat on Fridays; fish only. Others will decide to give something up for 40 days. In and of themselves there is nothing wrong with doing these things. This type of self-denial can be good for our souls. So long as one thing occurs; we dwell more upon Christ and His sufferings rather than focusing up-on our own and what we are giving up. If we end up thinking more about ourselves than Christ, then we have destroyed the season of Lent.
On Ash Wednesday we begin the season wearing ashes, confessing we are nothing but “dust and to dust we will return.” How humbling for all of us. The question is, what now? Since we confess we are dust and to dust we will return, where do we go from there? After all, that is a pretty serious confession. If we truly believe we are dust and one day our bodies will return to dust, who can save us from this tragic fate? You know who. Jesus, and Jesus alone, can rescue us from our dusty fate. Thanks to His death, our sins, which turn us to dust, have been removed. And thanks to Christ’s resurrection from the dead, we have the promise that our dusty bodies will be resurrected one day.
Lent is an invitation for us, and for all people, to return to the Lord our God. As the prophet Joel said, “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Joel 2:13). God is indeed very gracious to us. God is not gracious because we refrain from eating meat on Fridays. God is gracious to you because of Christ. God is merciful to you not because you gave something up for 40 days. God is merciful to you because Christ gave up His very life for you on Good Friday. May this coming season of Lent be a time that we re-joice in God’s graciousness and mercy shown toward us all because of the work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
– Pastor Grimenstein
