Ash Wednesday and Finding Calm

Next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. As is Lakeshore’s tradition, the sanctuary will be open from 12-1 PM and 5-6:30 PM for a time to be still, meditate, pray with a pastor and receive ashes. The ashes symbolize our willingness to receive forgiveness and return again to the ways of God. They ground us as we walk the wilderness journey of our faith that leads us through the devastation of crucifixion to the saving power of resurrection. While receiving ashes may not be a common Baptist tradition, I’ve come to find this annual ritual quite meaningful both personally and for our collective life together. As we continue to live in chaotic times nationally and transitional times as a congregation, I encourage you to take some time to visit the quiet sanctuary, be still and receive prayer and ashes.

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In our Tuesday night Bible Study class, we recently discussed the need to find calm amidst the stormy, chaotic times in which we are living – an important piece of our Ash Wednesday tradition. In the book we are reading, For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional, the author Hanna Reichel offers these words of wisdom for protecting ourselves and seeking calm. I share them as a foretaste of our Ash Wednesday time for meditation:

• Don’t let the storm control your emotions. Don’t let the storm direct your response. Don’t give it more power [than it already has].

The storm is not an illusion; its dangers are real. Even so, it is also a distraction.

• Don’t let the storm steal your focus.

Creating a state of emergency is a political strategy to gain unrestrained power.

• Don’t fall for it.

Keeping your focus, feelings, and thoughts your own is hard. But it is itself an act of resistance.

• Be strategic with your attention.

If there is to be a life beyond totalitarianism, we must cultivate a life outside its grasp, even as we live within it.

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Prayers as we find our way forward together, in the midst of the storms, transitions, and invitations life is presenting us.

Pastor Allison