More Ash Wednesday Thoughts

This from Father McKenzie (no, not the one from that song by the Beatles):

Keeping Lent is designed to make more room for the Holy Spirit in your life. Keeping Lent may or may not lead to feelings of joy, sorrow, happiness, or anger. You may or may not alienate a friend, have a spiritual experience, lose weight, or feel grouchy at work. Keeping Lent will not make you more holy or beloved in the eyes of God. Keeping Lent will not save you. 

Keep Lent anyway. 

All these Lenten thoughts are making me think I should dust off a Lent post I started 4 years ago and never finished. We'll se if that actually happens...

Ash Wednesday: Thoughts From a Friend

So this is great.

My Hutch-friend Jen has some great thoughts about Ash Wednesday - the liturgical celebration as well as the poem by T. S. Eliot. Here's a snippet.

Lent begins again this week. I’m going to give something up. I’m probably going to fail too. And yet, I still want to come, ash marked, to lay my own tiny sacrifice on the altar of grace. 

This is the tension. Teach me to care and not to care.

Read more over at Greener Trees.

Real-Life Heroes

These people are very dear friends, and also some of the most heroic Jesus-followers I know.

Check out the first post on their blog: http://schummexplosion.blogspot.com/2013/01/2-411-1-1-1-5-schumm-family.html.

That is all.