Tonight is our Ash Wednesday service. 6pm at The Chapel. We will keep the service at 60 minutes or less. If you are free, I hope you will join us for this kick of the season of Lent. A season of prayer and fasting, of refinement and reflection, and of journeying with Jesus to the cross. The service will be similar to a Sunday morning worship service. Songs, scripture, teaching and we will end with a time receiving ashes on your hand or on your forehead if you so choose.
Right after we sort out the candy, take down the cobwebs and spooky decorations, and toss the rotting pumpkin from our front porch, Sarah is ready to decorate for Christmas and start drinking Peppermint Mochas.
I, on the other hand, am a traditionalist. I need to wait another four weeks or so, watch Santa glide past Macy’s on a Thursday morning, and eat an unhealthy amount of carbs before I’m ready to prepare my heart and mind for Christmas.
We can’t wait to celebrate and remember Jesus stepping into creation. We jump at the opportunity to look toward the little town of Bethlehem. We love the traditions of counting down the days and indulging in the treats of the season.
But Easter feels different.
I bet that almost all of us have, at some point, stood on the beach at the shoreline and watched the water push in and out. As the tide rolls back and forth, sometimes it goes higher on to the dry sand and other times it barely seems to push in at all. Other times, it pulls out deep into the water exposing new mysteries on the gulf floor. No one can deny this ebb and flow. As well, rarely does anyone think when it pushes in, it will never end or when it pulls out the water is receding forever. We have seen the ebb and flow and we enjoy the ancient back and forth.
Life is a lot like this same ebb and flow. In different seasons it feels busy and chaotic and in other seasons it feels quiet and still. Rarely does anyone think this season will stay forever and honestly we all tend to look forward to the change in pace.
We are about to approach a change of pace here at The Chapel. Between Spring Break, the season of Lent, and other great things happening around here, there are lots of details you need to know. Please read below about the upcoming ebb and flow at The Chapel.
A few years ago we went to Italy and my kids, who already loved pasta, became even more infatuated with it. Most of us eat the store bought kind…but once you have real, homemade fresh pasta…it’s really hard to go back. So a few months back, they wanted to make some homemade pasta. We didn’t have a proper roller, but we made it work anyway. Then for Christmas we got a pasta maker and my kids have been working on creating unbelievable homemade pasta.
Making homemade pasta isn’t incredibly hard, it just takes a bit of time and effort.
I once was congratulating a friend for getting their PHD and they said all it is, is having Patience, Humility, and Discipline.
I’m sure it’s more than that…and I don’t think that’s what PHD stands for, but I haven’t looked into it.
Years ago Sarah and the boys and I watched all the Marvel cinematic movies. You know, The Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, etc…It was 22 movies over the course of 11 years spanning stories that take place over decades and decades…and we knocked it out in a few months during 2020. When the final movie of the original journey wrapped up with Endgame in 2019 there were lots of people that just assumed they could go see that movie without seeing 20 other films.
Yeah…you can…but that is like skipping to the end and watching the series finale of M*A*S*H or reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows or simply watching the Super Bowl without putting in the time to journey all the way there.