This Lent, we will be using Sanctified Art’s “Everything In Between” series. I am excited to once again be using a resource by Sanctified Art, the ministry that brought us last year’s Lenten theme, “Wilderness”.

What excites me most about Everything In Between is that most of us live in in-between spaces, yet the world tries to convince us that we need to be on one side or the other. The world wants us to believe that extremes are the only options and that only one thing can be true at a time. Everything In Between will help us to explore that two things can be true. This isn’t at all different from what it means to be Lutheran. Luther believed we are both sinner and saint, there is both Law and Gospel, or faith and works.

What connects us are not the things on the extremes, or being forced to choose one thing or another, but it is everything in between that connects us as people of God. I am so excited to journey with you this Lent as we grow together in this theme.

Our Journey begins tomorrow with Ash Wednesday. We will have services at 12:15pm and 6pm (soup supper precedes the evening service at 5pm). We will then continue the series each Sunday morning as we journey with Jesus on his way to Jerusalem. We invite you also to our Wednesday evening services throughout the season of Lent with soup at 5pm and service at 6pm. While Holden Evening Prayer is a beloved service, this year we will explore a new evening prayer service called Joyous Light. It is very similar in style to Holden Evening Prayer and I pray that you find its music as meaningful as you do Holden’s.

Our offering on Wednesday nights will go toward the 40-40-40 Lenten Challenge that the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry of Arizona is hosting. The money will support clean water to the Navajo Evangelical Lutheran Mission (NELM). We will also collect change (coins) on Sunday mornings that will go toward this ministry as well. We hope you can join us in this extra offering that will provide drinking water to this community. You can also sign up for the Lenten Challenge and find more ways to live out your Lenten journey.

I pray that you have a blessed Lent in the ways that you find journeying through it. May we all live into the ways we live in between and live out our commonness and connectedness in Christ.

Blessings,

 

Pastor Brian Weinberger