What a great month we had in Love Is a Verb February! We have considered how love means honoring God and one another, claiming God’s power for changing the world, choosing to love day by day and blessing God and others in word and in action. Along the way we celebrated the Lord’s Supper, renewed baptismal vows and thirteen couples chose to renew their marriage vows in worship together. How awesome is our God, who gifted us with unmerited and unconditional love!
As we move into the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday, March 1, our focus will be changing. After his baptism, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness fasting and praying. When he was weak in body Satan tempted Jesus to turn from the work God sent him to do. He was weak in body but through prayer and fasting he was strong in spirit. He set aside the temptations and began his ministry of teaching, healing, preaching, praying, dying and rising again.
During this season our Sunday morning services will focus on Conversations with God, based on prayers Jesus prayed as recorded in the Gospels. We can learn so much about God and Jesus through these prayers. We can also learn ways we can pray in all life circumstances.
We also have other worship opportunities each week. Beginning Wednesday, March 1 and continuing for six weeks we can worship as part of the Prairie Central Clergy Association lunchtime worship and meal. Each Sunday afternoon we will worship with other United Methodist congregations along Route 24 from Roanoke and Secor to Chatsworth. The schedules for these services are elsewhere in the newsletter.
Join us these 40 days of Lent (not counting the Sundays) in sacrificing time in order to worship God, converse with God and grow strong enough in spirit to resist temptations that draw us away from our work in Jesus’ name.