Again & Again

And God said that it was good.

Genesis 1

Dear Friends,

It is Lent again.

It is that time of year where we are invited to focus once again on our walk with Jesus… our prayer life… our worship life…

Why? Because again & again…

We drift off course.

We forget.

We get distracted.

We need to rediscover the height and depth and breadth of God’s love and desire for us.

That’s why we’ll be hearing again the stories of our spiritual ancestors in worship: Abraham, Joseph, Moses…

Again & again we’ll be hearing of God’s faithfulness and graciousness.

Again & again we’ll be allowing God to wipe our slate clean as we confess the things that we’ve done and haven’t done that get in our way with God and others.

You will hear this phrase, again & again, a lot during this Lenten season because I’ll be using a worship resource from a group called Sanctified Art. Part of the worship experience will also be a Prayer Wall where you’ll be invited to write your prayers on a strip of plastic and weave it into the wall.

Hear is a reflection by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman, one of the Founding Creative Partners of Sanctified Art,

“I most easily identify with the negative connotations associated with the phrase, ‘Again & Again.’ Each day I wake up, it feels like an echo chamber of bad news, and endless cycle of disappointment, and the disconcerting kind of dejá vu. The truth is, we as humans mess things up over and over again. Humanity’s cacophonous rhythm of ‘again and again’ harms our neighbor, ourselves, and the entirety of creation. You’d think we’d learn from our mistakes, perhaps take a lesson from history, and put an end to this cycle. But I’ve gotta be honest; as of late, I’ve almost lost hope in us. Which leads me to God’s again and again. I’m so unbelievably grateful for the ways God shows up over and over again despite our best efforts to push God away. Thank God that we are not left alone in our destructive cadence, but we are met by God, repeatedly forgiven, and mercifully shown the way. I hope to be ever cognizant of humanity’s ‘again and again,’ and resist the currents that keep us spinning in sin. I also hope to lean into and cling to God’s ‘again and again,’ which is ultimately this wonderful pattern of unearned grace.”

I look forward to seeing you this Lent… again & again!

Pastor Phil