Ash Wednesday is the traditional beginning of the Lent Season. Lent is a season where we explore the depths of our souls and prepare ourselves to fully enter into Easter. It is a season where we admit our brokenness, so that we may offer it to God to create something beautiful from our brokenness. This year we are going to focus on recovery and all the ways that Jesus helps us to recover and to heal. We will be using the idea of sea glass to connect it all. In case you have never seen or heard of sea glass here is a description:
“Ordinary pieces of tableware or beer or soda bottles are flung into the ocean. Years pass, or decades, and then one day, there it is upon the shore: a small shard from one of those long ago discarded objects. Shifting currents have rounded its edges; abrasion has polished its surface; exposure to the sun has altered its hue. And so, when we happen upon it, here amidst the shells and seaweed, we can’t help but laugh with joy at what seems a miracle: this ordinary fragment of silica that time and adversity have transformed into something beautiful.”
Time and adversity… making something beautiful out of that which, once seen as ordinary and broken, is now considered a transformed and precious piece. This is the journey we undertake this Lent. And on Ash Wednesday we will begin this journey. Normally we have a 7pm service at church and people receive ashes on their forehead. This year we will try something different. At 9am on our YouTube page and Facebook page the video will be released for you to watch and join in worship. At noon there will be a viewing of the service at church in Fellowship Hall for anyone that does not have internet.
This service uses a candle, water in a bowl, sand/dirt, and oil. If you have those items assemble them to worship but if not you can still enter into this time of worship. The music is meant to wash over you and not really meant for you to sing along with. The music is meant to help you enter into a holy space meeting God with your brokenness and allowing yourself to begin to release it to God. One of the songs used in the service is a portion of a song written by and sung by our very own Director of Music Ministries Holly Phillips. I know we are going to hear at least one more of her original songs during our Lenten season on brokenness and recovery.
Please feel free to share with anyone and everyone. Feel free to share to your Facebook page and to let others know about this opportunity for them to begin Lent from the safety of their home and as their schedule allows. I pray this means more people will be able to participate in Ash Wednesday and be able to join in this healing journey to Easter. I pray that this Lent might be a time of recovery for all our souls.
Blessings,
PH
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