Each year about this time, Margaret gets the urge to go to B.B. Barns, a garden shop in Asheville, or to Painter’s Greenhouse, an amazing flower and plant market that operates seasonally on a country road south of Old Fort, NC. She is the garden and plant person in our relationship. And this is the time of year she gets stirred to start digging in the dirt and cultivating wondrous things that grow in the woods surrounding our home.
In a way, this is a Lenten discipline. For Lent, the church season that begins on Ash Wednesday, February 26, and continues until Easter, is a time of
cultivation.
The word “Lent” comes from the the Old English word,
lencten,
which means “spring season.” It is the time the church has traditionally focused on the cultivation of faith. It is a time of stirring up the roots that sustain Christian faith, roots such as study of the bible and the theology of the church, prayer, service, hospitality, worship, contemplation. It is a time of preparing persons for welcoming into the Body of Christ, something that happened in the early church at Easter. Even here at First Church Greer this is the time we have our Confirmation Class.
I invite you all to join in digging around the roots of our faith this Lent. The church is offering ways to engage in this digging.
One is a
Congregational Luncheon
after the late service on
Sunday February 23
. At that lunch our guest will be the Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity, a very gifted young pastor who is the founder and director of
A Sanctified Art,
a minister of introducing art and reflection into the life of the church. Lisle will lead us in “An Invitation to the Lenten Journey” and offer us a guide for exploring the faith afresh in our own homes.
Another is our
Ash Wednesday Service at 6:30 PM on February 26.
In that service we will gather for the Imposition of Ashes and for the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
Even another is a
new study led by Whitney Moss on Wednesdays in Lent at 10:30 AM and repeated at 5:30 PM
. The study will follow a text by Adam Hamilton entitled
The Walk
.
Our children will use
Fabulous Friday on March 13th
to learn about
Faithfulness
and the practices that go into that and
Youth will gather throughout Lent
to study, worship and fellowship.
And yet another, for all, will be our
continued gathering on every Lord’s Day for worship, fellowship and study
.
And yet again there are
all the opportunities of sharing the love and justice of Jesus Christ through our ministries
of Dunbar Buddies, participation in the ministry of The Soup Kitchen, in signing up for Habitat house building, and visiting ministries with those facing hard passages within this congregation.
Come and dig at the roots of faith together as the beloved people of God who call themselves First Presbyterian Church of Greer.
Grace and peace,
Pete Peery
Interim Pastor
