Pastor Corner
March 2024
This is an exciting and very busy time of year. Everything that our faith is about leads us to this time of year. As we prepare for and enter into Lent and Holy Week we need to really go inward and look at our faith.
For man, the worst calamity is death. Yet Christianity had to face up to the fact that one death was at the heart of anything it wanted to say. The disciples of Jesus believe that he was the Messiah, the chosen one of God, the savior of the World, and yet the culmination of his life was death. The death of Jesus is so important for the Gospel writers that it absorbs most of their energy. The story of the last seven days of Jesus' life Sometimes called Holy Week) takes up almost a third of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, a fifth of Luke’s Gospel and almost half of John’s Gospel. It is as if the most important thing they had to explain was Jesus death on the cross, a subject that crops up in virtually every book of the New Testament.
The death of Jesus Christ our lord and savior should be something that we take time and put in the energy to better understand and allow to help us on our journey of faith. This year I am doing a sermon series on the inward journey during lent in which we look at our spiritual life and how we can grow closer to God inwardly. What is Christ calling us to see or avoid so that he can take up more of my heart. As we grow, we will see how God is revealing himself to us through the events of our daily lives and how he is with us every step of the way. Which we know through our faith, but until we experience HIM in our lives, we do not know just how much he loves us and just how close he is to us.
Just like the Gospels that spend so much time on this time of year we too need to really grow in our faith as we journey through Lent and Easter. My prayer this year is that each of you may experience Jesus Christ in a new and personal way and that you may grow closer to him and each other through your Lenten practices.
God Bless and May, you
have a prayerful Lenten journey.
Rev. Stephen W. Barch
March 2024
This is an exciting and very busy time of year. Everything that our faith is about leads us to this time of year. As we prepare for and enter into Lent and Holy Week we need to really go inward and look at our faith.
For man, the worst calamity is death. Yet Christianity had to face up to the fact that one death was at the heart of anything it wanted to say. The disciples of Jesus believe that he was the Messiah, the chosen one of God, the savior of the World, and yet the culmination of his life was death. The death of Jesus is so important for the Gospel writers that it absorbs most of their energy. The story of the last seven days of Jesus' life Sometimes called Holy Week) takes up almost a third of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, a fifth of Luke’s Gospel and almost half of John’s Gospel. It is as if the most important thing they had to explain was Jesus death on the cross, a subject that crops up in virtually every book of the New Testament.
The death of Jesus Christ our lord and savior should be something that we take time and put in the energy to better understand and allow to help us on our journey of faith. This year I am doing a sermon series on the inward journey during lent in which we look at our spiritual life and how we can grow closer to God inwardly. What is Christ calling us to see or avoid so that he can take up more of my heart. As we grow, we will see how God is revealing himself to us through the events of our daily lives and how he is with us every step of the way. Which we know through our faith, but until we experience HIM in our lives, we do not know just how much he loves us and just how close he is to us.
Just like the Gospels that spend so much time on this time of year we too need to really grow in our faith as we journey through Lent and Easter. My prayer this year is that each of you may experience Jesus Christ in a new and personal way and that you may grow closer to him and each other through your Lenten practices.
God Bless and May, you
have a prayerful Lenten journey.
Rev. Stephen W. Barch