Lent or Lint?

So I just realized today....this evening actually....that Lent begins in 2 weeks! Ash Wednesday will be March 6th and I am sort of prepared....but not really!

Last Sunday as we met with the youth of the church for our monthly Chalice Youth event (we feed the kids after church...have a lesson...sing some songs...do a craft) I spent a little bit of time with them breaking down the song "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High". It is a wonderful song and I encourage you to find it on the internet if you have never heard it. Anyway, we were looking at the part of the song that says "You came from Heaven to Earth, to show the way. From the Earth to the cross, my debt to pay....from the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky, Lord I lift your name on high". We talked with the kids about what those words meant... and it was a very good discussion...they seemed to grasp very quickly what the lyrics were saying. And then I later went into a discussion of Lent and asked them first, what Lent was. One young girl, who was probably about 10 or 11, raised her hand and said "Dust!" and it actually surprised me for a moment, because in all actually, it does amount to that in a certain way. I was expecting someone to say that stuff that comes out of the dryer or fuzz on your clothes, but I wasn't expecting "dust". And so we discussed what Lent was and I explained about the ashes that are put on your forehead and how they symbolized the fact that someday we would all return to ash or to dust. "Out of the mouths of babes" as Psalms has said or Jesus for that matter!

This Lenten Season, we are going to explore what it means to be willing to give up part of ourselves....perhaps the part that keeps us from seeing God from the viewpoint of a child. As much as it is a good idea to fast and give up some of our favorite things the 7 weeks before Easter, it is also good for us to enter this time of reflection on how we can let go of some of the things that may be holding us back. When I converse with my four grand-daughters, ranging in ages of nearly 4 to 11 years of age, I have found that if I quiz them about things that some adults really struggle with, their answers quite often seem so simple. For example, if I were to say "What is it that God wants us to do about people who have done something to hurt us?" they will usually quickly respond by saying something like..."we should pray for them" or maybe even "tell them that it wasn't nice". And of course, we as adults sometimes have a hard time wanting to pray for them and Heaven forbid that we approach the person and simply ask them to stop hurting us.

What a wonderful gift children can be! We have been having a wonderful time with the youth of our church, watching them become conscious of what is going on in church, seeing them be with their families and partake of communion with those family members. And to see how our church has responded in being so supportive of the kids is amazing as well. Since we started having "Noisy Offering" on Chalice Kids day, we have seen this special offering grow by leaps and bounds. The children have been given the responsibility of making a decision of what the money is to be used for and that is also teaching them the important lesson of being willing to give as well as learning to make valid and educated decisions about those finances.

I have said this quite often and will continue to say that God has been so very good to me and has led me to First Christian Church in Pauls Valley not just so I can help the parishioners grow and perhaps the church to physically grow, but I was led here so that I could grow and become a better servant to The One who has sacrificed so much for me.

My prayer for you is that as you enter into the season of Lent, regardless of whether it is here at our church or elsewhere, that you allow yourself to be moved by the Spirit of God that surrounds you and be open to the wonders of the children that you come in contact with. Their words of wisdom are so very often never heard!!

May God bless you and keep you!!

Pastor Elaine