Pastor's Corner: What does Lent mean to you?

Some Christian denominations follow a seasonal calendar that includes Christmas and Easter and a lot of other special days and events in between. Lent is the 40 days — not including Sundays — that come before Easter. It starts with Ash Wednesday, which was last week. You may have gone to a special service that day where a cross made of ashes was marked on your forehead or, if you didn’t go yourself, you might have seen that cross on someone else and wondered about it.

What, you might ask, is so significant about these 40 days? You may have heard people, even some who are not particularly religious or spiritual, talk about what they are “giving up” for Lent. This is a self-sacrifice meant to be a reflection of God sending His Son, Jesus, to be ‘sacrificed’ for our sake on Good Friday. Others may pick up a faith practice or spiritual discipline during this time such as rising earlier in the morning to spend more time in prayer or being hyper-vigilant in seeking out ways to show God’s love to others in word and deed. All of these things are to cause us to turn more from ourselves and turn more fully to God.

Two things occurred early this week that have caused me to remember human frailty and my need for God. First, I heard of a friend’s death in a car accident. The second was a Bible study. In both of these things, I heard the echoes of the words that were spoken on Ash Wednesday as the ash cross was traced on my forehead, “Remember that you are dust, to dust you shall return.”

The part of the Bible study, written by the Women of the ELCA — Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — that we looked at this week focused on several passages from 2nd Corinthians. Several verses that made an impression on me from 2 Cor. 4:5-7 are as follows,

“For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” For God, who said, “Let the light shine out of the darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

How do these things come together you might wonder? Ash Wednesday focuses on our mortality and remembering that daily as we live our lives. The death of my friend, a faithful Christian man, brings this knowledge home to me in an undeniable way. But, then, I am reminded that God has called each one of us to be an expression of God on this earth, showing forth Christ, not ourselves, in our lives every day. We have a treasure to share, God’s light that shines through our faith and the witness of our lives, though we are jars of clay. We are dust and to dust we will return, but in the meantime, we get to be living testimonies to God in the world for as long as we are able. I believe that my friend did this every day of his life. And, I pray that each of us will do likewise.

May you have a blessed Lent!

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The Rev. Linda E. Webster, Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation