March, 2009

Pastor's Message

Email Pastor Taylor

I’m writing this on Ash Wednesday.   I just returned from taking ashes to shut-ins.  It’s always an honor, and deeply moving to apply ashes to the foreheads of my brothers and sisters in remembrance of our mutual mortality and need for repentance.

And so begins Lent, that season of forty days and forty nights leading up to  Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and finally, Easter’s Resurrection joy.

But we must start in ashes.  How salutatory it is to keep our frail, clay-vessel mortality in view.  It humbles one; it warns one not to take oneself too seriously.  It throws one back again and again into the arms of God.  For if we must leave this life, our only chance of  further fellowship with loved ones and God is by God’s grace and action – none of our own.

I firmly believe that the One who has brought us this far: birth, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, parenthood, midlife crisis, golden years, and finally to our sweet peace… I firmly believe that THIS ONE will keep us and love us and nurture us into a reality much greater than anything we have ever known so far.

But first, the ashes, the ashes, “we all fall down,” right?  We fail physically, as we fail spiritually – but God loves us nonetheless, and Good Friday WILL be followed by Easter Sunday.  Hallelujah, praise be to God!

Love in Christ,

Chris