Saturday, February 27, 2010

Introduction - 2010

At last, a Lent that doesn’t start early in the year, that doesn’t sneak up on us before we have a chance to finish, or at least to start writing those devotions we’ve been storing up since last Easter.
What’s that? I seem to be dreaming, don’t I? Well at least there were plenty of books available on that last Sunday before Ash Wednesday. Oh, wait ....
Sadly, the calendar simply didn’t cooperate with me this year, and there wasn’t quite the creative “outreach” [you may prefer to think of it as “begging” or “badgering”] of previous years. No endless harangues, no threats of “this page left blank courtesy of ,” nor even purple Lenten Stockings hung in the hallway with care.
This translated into not very many submissions for this year’s book during the normal collection phase.

After eleven of these books, is it time to take a year off? Are we burned out from all this writing? Should we just do a book of classics?
Wait a minute. That’s what we did last year - a few new ones and a bunch of favourites from the past. How many times can people read about my coffee addiction, after all?

So, nothing was published - at least not on time - and yet, the devotions continued to trickle in, and we decided that we couldn’t miss out on some of these moments of sharing. So, a quick drag through the hymnal, a search through old emails, and - voila! - we have an all-new Lenten Devotion book.
I thank all of you who helped, cajoled, threatened, and wrote for this excellent effort.

Just as in the past eleven years, it seems only appropriate to repeat the introduction from our congregation's first book of devotions of more than thirty years ago:

Keeping a true Lent requires us to be vigilant in many ways: in prayer, study, worship, sacrifice, giving, meditation, and fellowship.

One or all may take precedence, depending upon our daily commitments. From these devotions, lovingly prepared, may you find a well spring of faith to renew and sustain you, so that the Glorious Triumph that is Easter will remain with you always.

The Lenten Committee


Again, we can but say, “Amen.”

Charlie van Becelaere, Editor

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