Pineridge Blog

Our continuing practice for Lent will be Music and Meditation Sunday at 9:50, prior to worship. Thanks for helping to create silence in the sanctuary.

In the last few weeks of Lent I have invited you to consider adding a discipline of Gratitude, an awareness of Wonder, to ask great questions, and to look for God each day on your Lenten journey.  This week I invite you to simply be aware of the gift that you bring to the world.

Jayne Davis wrote, “If we are just like everyone else, what’s the point? Truth is, God has made you unique. You have a combination of gifts, personality, sphere of influence, way of seeing the world like no one else. And the world needs to see how God is reflected through you, the real you. Trust that you are enough, just the way you are.”

Holy Week can be a very difficult. As it is hard to look at the images of war-torn Ukraine it is hard to hear the story again of Jesus final days.  The betrayal, the Crown of thorns, the beating, not to mention the cruel barbarity of crucifixion, is almost too much.  No wonder attendance at Maundy Thursday Last Supper services and Good Friday events has waned!

Sometimes it is hard to remember that it is a love story. As Jesus says in John, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

Not only does God love the world, but also each unique person. We do not have a cookie cutter God who makes us all the same or expects us all to look like everyone else.  God has the amazing ability to speak each person’s own native language so that we each know God’s love.

Last week I challenged you to notice how God is loving you through the world.  This week I hope you will realize how God is loving the world through you!  Happy Easter.