This year Valentine’s Day collided with Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. It’s tempting to pit these holidays against each other as if they are opposites. What does a day for celebrating love have to do with a time that emphasizes the suffering of Christ?

A whole lot actually. Because our faith shows us that self-denial and suffering are the basis of all true love.

On the cross, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That prayer includes the soldiers and priests who condemned and crucified Jesus. It includes all of us for whom Jesus died. Because Jesus made the greatest sacrifice, he is able to give us sinners the greatest gift.

Jesus said that the greatest love is to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. He is telling us that nobody can really love another without it costing something. True love is not just sentimental, it’s sacrificial.

God’s Word says, “Love one another as Christ loved you.” This is how the cross and the valentine fit perfectly together. Loving someone involves a painful death to self, a giving up of my pride, rights, desires, and grudges.

Any good friendship, marriage, family, or church is really a union of forgiven forgivers. When we are sinners saved by Christ’s costly gift we will learn how to love each other in the same sacrificial way.

Alan Crandall
Pastor of Care

Lent is a 40-day walk through daily and sometimes hourly reminders of the gospel. We remind ourselves of the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus by giving up, or fasting from simple pleasures. We also take-on additional spiritual practices to grow in love. Lent, together with the celebration of Easter, focuses our lives on the wonderful love of God in the gospel.

During this season we remember the sacrifice of Jesus, we examine our hearts, and we look outwardly at what it means to live in light of the gospel. This is an opportunity to re-center our lives on the gospel of Jesus through disciplines of lament,  confession, and repentance.

The practices of Lent reinforce our unity as a congregation because focusing on Jesus and the Gospel creates community. As we learn and re-learn repentance, explore Jesus’ humility, embrace suffering, engage in communal lament, look to the sacrifice of Jesus for our redemption, and experience the death and resurrection of Jesus through this season, we grow closer to God
and each other.

Our time walking the road marked with suffering leads us to ask questions like: “What would it mean for us to foster humility like Jesus’?” and “What would it look like for us to lament the sin, destruction, and suffering in our city?” and “How can we actively sacrifice in response to God’s grace?”

Daily, we continue this journey toward the cross and resurrection, as we dwell with Jesus in the Gospels. Weekly, we journey together as we gather in worship. Hourly, we ask: What are we learning about Jesus and how is this changing us?

I love the season of Lent!

Dwelling in Jesus,
Pastor Kent