It’s time to get ready for Easter.  I don’t mean the readiness already being promoted by retailers who have Easter candy on the shelves even before we’re finished with Valentine’s Day chocolates.

I meant the readiness for Easter that the Christian church has promoted for more than 1500 years.  Early Christians believed that Easter Sunday should represent the peak of our holiness, our loyalty to Christ represented in Christian discipline.

You can’t reach that place overnight.  All of us become spiritually lazy through the year, and we need some time to be intentional about rekindling our hearts and refocusing our energy on listening to the Lord and following him.

Forty days sounds about right.  It’s long enough to re-establish some good habits and replace some bad ones.  It’s a good length of time to deny ourselves some things that are not necessarily evil in themselves, but sometimes get out of control.  It’s the amount of time Jesus himself spent fasting in the wilderness.

The name “Lent” comes from an old English word related to “lengthen,” because spring is when the days get longer.  The forty days of Lent do not include Sundays, because Sundays are always “feast days,” not “fast days,” in honor of the Lord’s resurrection.

This week we formally begin Lent  on a day we call “Ash Wednesday.”  Some of you will read this message in time to remind you to join our Ash Wednesday service at Corinth February 17 at 6:30 PM in the sanctuary.  The pastors will place ashes, symbols of mortality and humility, on the foreheads of the worshipers, and we will share in the sacrament of Holy Communion as we remember the sacrifice of Christ that provided our salvation.

If you are not able to join us for the service, you may still join the Lenten journey.  This year we will be encouraging a Lenten discipline of writing prayers each day, especially prayers for the ordinary events of our lives – prayers for getting up, eating a meal, going to school or the office, working out, doing chores, serving others, bathing the children, going to bed, and so on.  Write your prayer and share it with others as we learn to “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

If you are on Facebook post your prayers to a group called Write a Prayer for Lent.  If not, write them out and e-mail or mail them to me.  Let’s pray together during Lent.