Ash Wednesday Reflection: Letting Go

Lent invites us to look closely, to peer into the darkness of the deep winter and into the crevices of our hearts…

The imagery of this season – the season of Lent – is stark.

Grey and slate skies and black lines outlining trees with no apparent life, showing no sign of the possibility of growth hidden deep in their roots.

Light giving way to darkness so early in our days, revealing what we have energy for and what must be relinquished to the winter fatigue.

Tonight our candlelight illuminates our hopes and fears – magnifying both, inviting us to examine our own hearts, to look and see what is casting a shadow on our ability

To love on another

To grow towards wholeness

To return to God

Much as Jesus will enter the desert to pray and fast for forty days, Lent offers us a landscape that calls us to look at our lives from a new perspective, what will we relinquish to God?

What are we clinging to?

What holds us back?

What hems us in and makes us afraid?

I invite you to take a moment and reflect… to remember how deeply loved you are, and how God longs for your return.

Your offering this lenten season is your willingness to give up what holds you back, what stands between you and those you love, what keeps you from knowing the fullness of God’s love.

What will you offer to return to God?

Peace, Shawna

Musical Mediation

Be Still

The Fray

(From our Ash Wednesday Taizé Service at Friendship Presbyterian Church.)

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