Dear Caldwell,
Gail here at the keyboard this week. It’s hard to believe, but Lent begins tomorrow. At 6 pm, we will have an Ash Wednesday Taize service – a time of quiet reflection, Scripture reading, music, and contemplative preparation to begin this Lenten journey. Please plan to be with us in the sanctuary tomorrow for worship and also to have ashes imposed.
Also tomorrow, at noon, the Elizabeth Communities of Faith will begin our annual Wednesday noon Lenten series. This year, we will meet at St John’s Baptist Church, just up the street, at the corner of 5th and Hawthorne. (That intersection is no longer under construction. Thanks be to God for that!) Every Wednesday, except for tomorrow, lunch will be served following worship. All donations for lunch will support two refugee resettlement organizations here in Charlotte.
Here at Caldwell, our theme for this Lent is “Wilderness.” If you were in worship last Sunday, I hope you saw and grabbed one of the Wilderness devotional guides. These booklets provide us with a special community-wide opportunity to read, ponder, write, pray, and worship around this theme for the next six weeks. If you haven’t gotten one yet, they will be available tomorrow evening at the Ash Wednesday service and again on Sunday morning. And if we run out, do not worry; I can print more.
Every Sunday during Lent, Rev. Justin Martin will guide us on an exciting new adventure. I’ll let Justin explain it in his own words.
“This year as a part of our ongoing celebration of Lent we will be trying something new here at Caldwell. Each Sunday from March 1st until April 12th we will have a totally intergenerational Sunday School program, that is open to all, from 9:45 am until 10:45 am each morning in Belk hall. As we gather together, the people who take part will be split into groups of 4 to 6 people of blended ages. There will be four stations set up in Belk that will allow each group to encounter the scripture of the week through various different mediums. Each group will spend 15 minutes at each station, so that everyone can experience each station.
“Each week the stations will be different, but they will follow a similar format. There will be a station to read and discuss the text for that week, which should most often match the scripture read in the worship service. There will be a station to encounter the scripture through art, both creating it and experiencing art that others have created. There will be a station with an activity for the group to do together that could be like playing a game or creating a group craft. Finally there will be a station that involves a spiritual practice, like prayer, journaling, meditation and creating sacred spaces.
“We hope that this time together provides people of all ages an opportunity to dig deeper into the journey of Lent, and provides us all with an opportunity to spend time with people from age groups that we might not otherwise encounter. There is a real blessing in sharing our thoughts and experiences with people that are younger than us, and similarly there is a richness of life that can be felt when we hear from the young people around us and learn from their ideas. This is an opportunity not to be missed.”
I pray that you will join us, learn with us, and grow with us as we embark on a soul-stirring and faith-building journey with God this Lent – into, through, and beyond the wilderness.
Grace and peace, Gail