Every two weeks, Rev. Todd Farley writes an article to the congregation as part of our newsletter entitled The Advance. Below is the article from (March 2, 2010):
LENT AND THE PHOENIX
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust… from the dust we have come to the dust we will return.
Boy, Lent sure sounds gloomy - with all of its focus on dreary repentance, self-deprivations. And what is at the climax of the season…a crucifixion of death. With the gray days of winter, the cold chill and biting cold of a frozen land, it is easy to see Lent as a time draped in dreary. But it doesn’t have to be so. Oh, it is true that Lent is a time of fasts, but Jesus warns against the moaning public fasts of supposed piety. Instead, he encouraged his followers to a lively fast; a fast where you wear your Sunday best and go and DO the good works of God. It is a time of great transformation, where even death serves life, where self-sacrifice means growth, and our giving means someone else is getting.
Lent is a time to learn that in our darkest hours we are preparing for glorious light. Lent reminds us that, while we suffer times of death, resurrection life is being prepared. It is true, that Lent contains the dark side of the Cross…but its darkness only causes the light of Resurrection to shine all the brighter. We are in a time of contrasts, where Jesus is transfigured as the Glorious Lord of Light, and he is also revealed as one who weeps in a dark garden alone. Lent should teach us that life is filled with ups and downs. The question is not if our lives will be filled with both dark and light, good and bad, but how do we deal with it? Some are overcome and lose focus, become negative and consumed with self. Many lose their path and descend into sorrows which devour their souls. Lent is time to learn how to turn the darkness into light; how to positively deal with the negatives of life struggles. How deprivations such as fasting do not need to be unto starvation, but rather spiritual growth. How my loss can be another person’s gain, as when I give and they receive. Lent is a time to prepare ones soul to be an overcomer.
Lent is the time of the phoenix, that legendary bird that grows old then dies in a blaze of fire, turning to ashes, only to be reborn in the embers as a new and glorious creature of beauty. Our life has such cycles of struggle and victory, failures that prepare us for our successes. It is in our failures that we learn and by the straining of our muscles that our strength grows. So, during this Lent, don’t just focus on what you “fast” and give away, focus on how that participates with what you gain and become. See this as a time to learn how to overcome, how to turn the darkness into light, and how to let God breathe life back into the
ashes of our weary soul.
Pastor Todd