Our theme for Lent is “Celebrating Our Story”. Every one of us is “in process” as an individual; we are a story. It’s a story in which God is intimately involved and to which God is passionately devoted. Having explored the Letter to the Philippians last month, we are now taking up one of St Paul’s themes: While we find ourselves right now in the middle of that story (with all its beauty, joy and struggle) we can look back to the past, even to the beginning of our journey, to trace the presence of God’s love and mercy in our lives.  As we embrace and celebrate that, we can and look ahead to what is to come with great hope and confidence.

Throughout the series we will be hearing stories of “God at work in us” from various members of our community and in our groups we’ll have opportunity to share our stories with one another. In keeping with the season of Lent we will be taking a reflective approach (beginning with our Ash Wednesday service) as we seek to grow in our experience of God’s presence in our lives now through increasing our awareness of God presence with us in the past. We’ll be practicing a number of spiritual exercises to help us with this.

As part of Lent we will be celebrating baptisms, membership and dedications on Commitment Sunday March 4^th and on Sunday March 25^th we will have our Lenten Day of Service where we’ll go out to serve our community in all kinds of practical ways.