This year March 1^st not only begins a month it begins our season of Lent with Ash Wednesday. Although I grew up in the church, I did not grow up practicing Lenten devotional practices or even going to Ash Wednesday services, they weren’t part of my church’s tradition. We are blessed to be able to use this time to draw closer to an awareness of God’s love and grace given to us through Jesus Christ.

As we come into this season I want to encourage you to use this time to practice various spiritual disciplines. Our Elders and Deacons have written wonderful, heart-felt devotions for each day to help us on our journey.

We can use this season meditate on God’s Word and God’s presence. Sometimes the word ‘meditate’ brings up visions of people sitting in a ‘lotus’ position, legs crossed and palms up or some super spiritual feat. But as Rick Warren has explained meditation is simply focused thinking. When we think about a problem over and over in our mind, that’s called worry. When we think about God over and over, that’s meditation. If we know how to worry, we already know how to meditate.We just need to switch our attention from our problems to God. The more we meditate on God, the less we will have to worry about.

So this Lenten season, instead of worrying about what to give up (candy, chips, coffee, etc.) why not give up worry?

God Bless,

Donn