Giving Up Anxiety for Lent: A Lenten Worship Series
Next week, we enter the Lenten season, which begins with the Ash Wednesday service on March 2. Every year it seems that I move through the same two routines around this time:
I am eager for Lent to begin and enjoy planning for public worship and personal disciplines.
I am so surprised with how quickly Lent seems to arrive!
Isn’t time so funny in the way it seems to fly one day and drag another? Or perhaps the better question is: aren’t we funny creatures the way we measure time?
How we steward God’s gift of time during Lent can be a tremendous experience of spiritual growth. For centuries, we followers of Jesus hear an invitation to fast from something so that we might learn on what we need to be feasting instead: the riches of his grace! This past Sunday we sang a verse in our hymn of praise that indeed declared, “Feasting on the riches of his grace, resting ‘neath his sheltering wing…”
One of the greatest enemies we battle in our quest to feast & to rest with Him is anxiety. What if we decided to fast from anxiety and worry during Lent this year? I see some of you scoffing and chuckling and rolling your eyes as you read that last statement! You likely wonder, “How am I supposed to give up anxiety?!”
We all need help in our fasts. Our time in worship and meditation in the Word of God will help us as a congregation to do exactly that. I encourage you to search your own heart to see if God might lead you to give up something personally as well. After all, holiness is both personal & social. So let us walk into this Lenten season aware of our need and awake to his grace.
all good things to each of you
Dr Darian
Lectionary Texts for Transfiguration Sunday (February 27, 2022)
Exodus 34: 29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36