Happy New Year my brothers and sisters
in Christ. The long nights of winter are here. It is as if the
earth begins its long winters nap around this time. Autumn was the
season of gathering and preparing for this time and now its time to
rest. The flourish of activity all culminating in the festive season
has come to an end. The crescendo and cacophony of the holiday season
has come and gone. We were reacquainted with friends and family as
we celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ and now they are back in
their homes and the tempo of life is begging to slow just a bit.
We turn our gaze inward. In just a
few weeks we will enter into the season of Lent. We will prepare
ourselves, spiritually for the celebration of the most holy, the most
wonderful event in human history, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus.
The focus for the next three months in our worship, our Sunday
school classes and our communion together will be that inward journey
of self-examination. We will spend time looking at our own personal
spiritual health as well as the spiritual health of St. Paul as a
community.
Please take this time of and let God
bless you. As a help and an opportunity, I am making a couple of
things available. First, every day, Monday through Thursday I will
be having prayer time in the sanctuary from 11:30-11:45. This is a
time of worship that will be spent in scripture reading, prayer, and
silence. Then beginning in Lent there will be a Thursday evening
program of fellowship and spiritual formation. I will be leading a
group through the book Companions in Christ (ISBN
978-0-8358-9843-0).
If you have been through is book before it is is certainly worth
doing again. These evenings are meant to be a help spiritually and
temporally. Bring a dish to pass and we will have a fine meal
together and you will only have one dish to clean at the end of the
night.
I thank God for
each of you. May this season be a blessing to you.
In His Love,
Pastor JonS
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