This Lenten season, you are invited to go on A Journey to Hope as we travel with Jesus to the cross, discovering along the way that Hope can be found even as we encounter some of life’s most difficult circumstances. By addressing real life circumstances along the way (i.e., relationships, self-esteem, work, temptation, money problems, suffering and death), those on the journey learn how faith in Christ is relevant to everyday life and how having a faith community can make all the difference.

Ash Wednesday (February 17)  begins with Mark 8:31-37 with Jesus’ turn to Jerusalem.

A Journey to Hope is a unique approach to these weeks before Holy Week that begins with Jesus announcing he will enter Jerusalem and gives us time to linger over some of the experiences that Christ has on the path to the cross.

Join us this Lenten Season for a Journey to Hope!

A Cause For Pause…

Salvation, like life it is a journey. It is fast and it is slow, with often our greatest gains during our deepest sorrows as we wait for God who so often seems slow to respond. Yet it is in this seemingly quite period that God’s grace is often already at work in our lives. In the darkness we are drawn toward the light of Christ and grow stronger in our faith as we maintain our hope in God. “Those who wait for the lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31

Unfortunately, so many Christians take only half of the journey, then quit. This seems to wrap up most of humanities view of living with God. We live with little thought of a renewed relationship with our Creator. We are willing to take the refreshing drink of life from the Lord so long as it doesn’t interfere with our living arrangements, so long as it does not cost too much. No job, no corporation, would take such a half hearted effort as the one most Christians give our Lord. It would be like showing up only on pay day for a week’s wage, time after time.

Salvation is a long and beautiful journey with pain and joy interwoven to make our own distinct pattern; a quilt of our life with God and Creation. To think we should only give the Creator one moment of life as we confess with our mouth our devotion to the Lord misses most of the grace of God that has been offered. Can we imagine the life God has in store for us? Only if our eyes are open and the desire of our heart is in tune with the Holy Spirit of God. We must read, we must pray, we must journey to grow and prosper in the greatest of all relationships. How unfortunate to live a life with God on our lips but not on our heart. How unfortunate to stumble through the shadows of existence avoiding the light of Christ because we fear we may lose control or be changed. The writer Henry James once wrote “It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.” It is time to start living the greater and deeper life God has offered.

God Bless You

Pastor Rick