Dear friends –
In the next few days, those of you on our active mailing list should receive a card from River Glen. Please keep this handy for our youtube worship for Ash Wednesday at 7 pm. Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our mortality – that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We have, in some ways, stayed in Lent for an entire year with the pandemic. We have had plenty of reminders of our mortality and tasted the bitterness of ashes over this past year – ashes of disappointment, loneliness, systemic racism, fear, cancelled plans, illness, and in some cases, members have even lost family to Covid-19.
Your mailing includes ashes, and if it is meaningful to you, you are welcome to impose ashes on yourself or if you’re fortunate enough to have family members in your home, one another. But as a single pastor friend of mine is quick to remind, self-imposed ashes might just be too much right now. Feel free to leave the ashes on the card – maybe hang it up as a reminder of our Lenten journey together, or not. What is most important in the season of Lent is the reminder of our dependency on God, who will get us through and who promises abundant life – the God of resurrection, new beginnings, and life from death.
Lenten blessings be yours however they may arrive as we journey together toward the cross,
Pastor Jess