As most of you all know, we will be giving away coffee and hot chocolate at Deep Run Park on Saturday and Sunday morning this weekend (March 14-15) and again on March 28-29. We will have a table at the park from 8:00-11:00am each morning and would love to have several people from Incarnation at the table at all times. Our desire for these mornings is to take a small step forward in learning to love and bless the people in our community, spread awareness about the church, and share the kindness of Jesus in a tangible way.
If this is intimidating to you, don’t worry! We will have several people there at all times (Steven or Justin will be there most of the time), and you aren’t being asked to give a “sales pitch” for the church or full gospel presentation. This is merely opening the door to those outside the church. If people ask why we are doing it, the only answer you need to give is that we want to share the kindness of Jesus with others , or that we want people to know our church exists so that they know where they can turn when they are in a place of need.
Please sign up for one of the slots! If a slot is already full, don’t hesitate to add yours and join the group!
Lent is a Gift
It may sound strange to think of a season marked with fasting and penitence as a gift, but it is!
Lent is preparation for a feast. You can’t feast if your stomach is full of cheese puffs. You can’t wear a wedding dress over your workout clothes. We get ready for the feast by looking deeply at all the sin and distractions that entangle us, and begging God to remove them. We get ready by looking intently at our brokenness, and asking God to heal us. We get ready by letting Aslan tear off our dragon-skin so we can be made clean and new.
Take time to mourn your sin, with all its consequences. Lament, but take heart. Mourn your sin so you can rejoice in the hope of Christ. It may be a paradox, but it’s true—there is joy for Christians who recognize their sin and look to Christ. Your love for God will increase as you learn to hate your sin. Your experience of the presence of God will grow as you dig deeper into the life of repentance.
“The Spirit and the Bride say ‘come’… Let the one who is thirsty come.” And as you wait for that feast, receive this time of preparation as the gift that it is.
-Justin
An Introduction to Lent and Ash Wednesday
It is good to be reminded each year why we come together on Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is the first day of a 40 day period of preparation for Easter, and from very early on the church believed that it was important to prepare for the greatest celebration of the church year, the celebration of the resurrection. Ordinarily, preparation meant fasting, confession of sin, prayer, increased attendance at church, and gifts to the poor.
It might strike you as odd that we need to prepare for Easter, particularly by fasting and prayer. It is odd, because our world doesn’t do this. The ancient church believed that the great feasts of the church—principally Easter and Christmas— were something to prepare for, and preparation looked like fasting, confession of sin, and prayer. The early Christians didn’t make this up: the pattern is all throughout the Bible. Noah undergoes a period of fasting and waiting on the ark as the rain fell for 40 days, before he came out and planted a garden and received a covenant from God. Moses fasted, or waited, in Midian for 40 years before he returned to Egypt to free his people. He fasted on Sinai for 40 days before he received the Law from God and saw God himself. The Israelites waited in the desert for 40 years before entering the promised land. Elijah fasted for 40 days before he encountered God at Mount Horeb. Jesus fasted for 40 days before beginning his ministry of salvation.
And so the early church realized that preparing for an encounter with God, for a celebration, and for a time of renewed gospel proclamation was a Biblical thing. And the best way to prepare was to pray, fast from things that distract us (even if they are good things), increase our devotion to worshiping with the church, and give to the needy.
In the word Martin Luther loved, we need to “mortify” ourselves, that is, put to death our desires, so that we will be prepared to meet God, prepared to celebrate the resurrection of the Son. We don’t earn anything by doing this. God doesn’t love us more and it doesn’t make us better Christians. Fasting can quickly make people self-righteous, if they think it gives them favor with God. We fast because we need it: we are distracted, weighed down by the world, weighed down by our fleshly desires. We need to be purged so that we can see God clearly, and Lent is the great period of preparation and purging, of mortification and prayer, while we wait to celebrate the resurrection again. I once heard someone say, “If you are driving through the mountains with mud on the windshield, taking the mud off doesn’t make you more in the mountains. But it sure helps you see them!” Fasting doesn’t earn our place with God, but it can help us see him!
Ash Wednesday is merely the first day of Lent. Tonight, you will be reminded of your mortality, reminded of your sinfulness, and called to confession, prayer, and fasting. But you are being called to fasting so that you might be ready to rejoice again in the resurrection. Our hope is not in our fasting, prayer, or spiritual disciplines. Our hope is in the fact that the Son of God became man, died on our behalf, and conquered Hell, Satan, and death by rising again from the dead. And now he is at the right hand of the Father, and so we have his Spirit and can enter the very presence of the Father in heaven. This is our hope!
-Steven