Lent Service
Dinner: 5:45 PM
Service: 6:30PM
Asbury Church Chapel
As our secular calendar has the seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter so too does our church calendar have seasons. Our year begins with Advent, then Christmas, Epiphany, and now Lent. Lent is a time of forty days plus six Sundays beginning with Ash Wednesday and concluding with Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday, which begins the season of Eastertide. Growing up in the 1950’s – yes, I am that old – Lent was the time when my Roman Catholic friends and neighbors gave up eating meat on Fridays prompting our contemporary Friday Fish Fries. There was, and still is, a prompting to “give up something for Lent”. Typically, a personal pleasure, such as no chocolate during Lent, Or, cutting out television. The idea being to cause yourself to reflect on Jesus’ life: his suffering, crucifixion, death, and resurrection.In more recent years many Methodists, and other non-Roman Catholics, have also begun to observe this season as not so much a time of penance and legalistically giving up something but rather giving greater emphasis on it being a time of transformation resulting from our drawing closer to Christ and his suffering, death, and resurrection. Lent should be a time of renewed emphasis on becoming more like Christ, more deeply committed to him as Lord and Savior. Asbury Church has long been committed to observing a Holy Lent, not so much by purposely giving up some pleasure but with adding to our Lenten days means, or ways, of spending more time with our Lord. We do this with additional worship, personal time in prayer, reading God’s Word, reflecting on God’s grace and mercy as exemplified in Jesus, and seeking and responding with intention to transform our lives to be as Christ to the world.
