Pastor's Article

LENT

A TIME FOR NEW BEGINNINGS

Easter is a story of new beginnings…and Lent gives us tIme to prepare for that unexpected good news.           

The shadow of the valley of death hangs over all of life. Death brings an end to everything: relationships and plans. The stronger the love, the greater the pain when that love must end. The brighter the scholar, the greater the tragedy when knowledge dies with him.    

No matter what goes on in the day, fear thrives in the night: how will it end...for me? At the heart is not just the fact that people must die, but that they deserve to die because they are estranged from God.          

But the first Easter changed all that. Christ rose from the dead - proof that God cared and that life can begin again. Humanity no longer faces death as an unknown, an end. In the Resurrection of Christ, we see ~hat even death is a new beginning.          

God makes possible new beginnings, not only in ultimate terms, but in all of life's experiences. Relationships that have reached dead ends can begin again through the expression of forgiveness. Forgiven much, we can now forgive and thereby discover a human expression of what God is like.