Worship in February at Lyndon

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

With snow still on the ground and Christmas cake and shortbread still being shared on pastoral visits, it seems too soon for me to be writing about Lent and the challenge to give it all up, but it will be upon us within a few weeks.

Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Lencten, from which we get our word lengthen, and it referred simply to the fact that the weeks leading up to Easter were the early Spring days that were lengthening after the winter solstice. The idea of giving something up connects to the Lenten fast – the toughest of the medieval fasts – representing the 40 days that Jesus withdrew into the wilderness. The fast has several purposes: to remind us daily that we depend on God for everything; to draw us closer to God in prayer; to reconnect us with the idea of community; and to help us to follow Christ’s journey through the wilderness and on to Jerusalem.

It can, however, be all too easy to simply give up a treat for Lent, feel pleased with our self for breaking a bad habit, or losing weight, and not really engage with the deeper meaning. Maggie Dawn, in an accessible little book called Giving it Up, suggests that if we are to draw closer to God, we need to be able to give up some of our entrenched ideas about God in order to see him more clearly. It’s not so much giving up “false gods,” but more about identifying false or blurred images of God and allowing them to be replaced. We need to allow the light to be shed on those places where our ideas of God are too harsh, too weak, too fragile, too stern and too small.

So come and worship God during this season of Lent and see if your preconceived ideas are challenged and enlarged. We begin by joining Acocks Green on Wednesday 17th February 7.30pm for an Ash Wednesday

Service. Mothering Sunday, the 4th Sunday in Lent on the 14th March, coincides with our Parade Service and we look forward to celebrating with our wider church family.

The following week, on the 21st March, as part of the culmination of our 50th Anniversary Celebrations, Jesus Crew will lead our service giving thanks for the work of the Sunday School and Jesus Crew over the past 50 years.

On the 28th March, Karen Bell will lead our Palm Sunday celebrations in the morning. In the evening we will enjoy a service of word and song as the Passion narrative from Luke’s Gospel is read and hear the good news of our forgiveness and reconciliation with God.

During the Lent period there will also be opportunity for small group study as we join with our Churches Together friends to run Lenten Bible Study groups once more. There will be opportunity to explore the word in 2 ways. The first will be using the material produced by Paul Gooder. Last year she gave us Lentwise, this year A Way Through the Wilderness which explores Isaiah 40 looking at experiencing God’s help in times of crisis. Pauls seeks to help us to strengthen and add to our spiritual toolkit once more.

If you would like a deeper look at the Crucifixion then When I Survey....Christ’s Cross and Ours, maybe more for you. Written by John Pridmore and advertised extensively in the Methodist Recorder, this seeks to look at the suffering world with themes of despair, silence and hope. Both sets of material are highly accessible and will challenge those new to faith and those with many years experience.

All the groups will begin meeting the week of the 22nd February 2010 for 5 weeks and meet either on a Monday night (women only), Tuesday morning or Friday night.


Julia Monaghan
13.01.10