February 7th

It is hard to believe that Ash Wednesday is 6 days away.  With that comes the season of Lent.  Each year as I approach this season I begin to reflect on what is different this year from last year.  Sometimes I find that there is little difference.  That is when I realize that I haven’t grown in some ways over the last year.  Sometimes it feels as if I am just putting one foot in front of the other.

I am not saying that I don’t still feel my call or that I don’t spend time with God or with those who are in need.  It just feels that at times the passion is less than what I would hope.  Maybe it is the middle of winter and I continue to fight some sort of bug that has been at me since the week before Christmas.

I do know that when I get to the darker place, God shines His light upon me and inspires me in ways that I never would have imagined.  An example for me, I planned to do a bible study of Adam Hamilton’s new book “The Way.”  I ordered it and found out that it was not going to be shipped until after the beginning of Lent thus defeating the purpose of the study.  As I was contemplating what I wanted to do, I came across a bible study I had done at Springfield on Holy Week.  This was mostly my research and some based on Borg and Crossan’s book “The Last Week” what the gospels say and don’t say about holy week.  Somehow I got fired up and decided to do this again with additional information from other sources.  Unfortunately what I had saved on my old computer was on the hard drive that was stolen in the break in at Springfield.  I did find hard copies of the materials and am resurrecting those.

As I was preparing these, I thought why don’t I offer this for those who are unable to come to church over Facebook.  So I created a group Ainsworthbiblestudy which people can search and take part.  What I will post will not be the entire study with all the references but will be a weekly study of each day of the Holy Week.  Each week will have daily readings with reflection questions.  I hope that those who participate would be willing to post some of their reflections.  First time that I have done this so hope that it will be a Lenten discipline for all who want to learn more about this last week of Jesus’ ministry prior to the resurrection.

Hope to see on there or at church.

Pastor Eldon