HELLO!

February 22^nd is Scout Sunday, some of our Scouting participants (they meet in the – so many names for the old white church building) will be there, worshipping with us. Flags, Promises, campfire songs, skits, etc… We will be rearranging the sanctuary to give it a “campfire vibe”. Here is the background you need to know: Scout Week is celebrated in recognition of Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement, and his wife Lady Olave Baden-Powell, founder of the Girl Guide movement. Scout week celebrates the Baden-Powell's legacy of teaching youth life and leadership skills to improve communities. Our worship service will be based on the format of a Scouts campfire. Suitable attire includes campfire blankets from your Scouting or Guiding days. Following the service there will be a mug-up (coffee) downstairs in the Hall. There will be a Scouting display, Cub Car track set up for people of all ages to race their Cub Cars, Beaver Buggies and Scout Trucks. Bring your collection from your Scouting days, tune them up!

February 22^nd also marks the beginning of our Lenten journey. Lent is modeled on Jesus’ forty-day fast in the wilderness. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness during his fast (Matthew 4:1-11). For literalists, here is a fun fact, Lent lasts 40 days if you exclude Sundays from the count (Ash Wednesday-Easter). Lent is an opportunity to focus on repentance and dependence on God. Our western culture glorifies wealth and prosperity.   Matthew's Gospel describes Jesus as "famished" after forty days of fasting. Physically, he's at the end of his strength. It’s in this state of vulnerability the tempter comes, ready to pull Jesus away from his vocation.

If Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness is a time for Jesus to decide who he is and how he will live out his calling, then consider carefully what the Saviour chooses: deprivation over ease. Vulnerability over rescue. Obscurity over honour. At every instance in which he can reach for the certain, the extraordinary, and the miraculous, he reaches instead for the precarious, the quiet, and the mundane. Our dependence of God, on God’s provision, on God’s purpose, on God’s presence, is tested in Lent.

Idol worship in Jesus’ time was characterized by putting one’s faith in golden/shiny object, power, domination, control via certainty, rigid practices, identity based on nationality, race or wealth. Around a campfire we feel the sense of belonging, of connection, of delight.

Feel this Spirit. Let go of the need to separate, to self-righteously proclaim, “at least I am not like them…” Humility creates space for the openness to what is deeper, more lasting, and satisfying. Peace, Kevin

PS One way to “let go” and enjoy the Spirit of the moment is to enjoy this gathering without scratching the itch of “what used to be”. “That was nice except…there weren’t as many Scouts as there were when my children were Brownies/Cub/Guides/Scouts”. If every experience includes the filter of “it is not as big as it was 50 years ago” I am not sure any given moment would be a joy-filled one. People tell me, “Nostalgia can be a comforting reminder of past joys”. Yes. But it can also be a distraction that prevents us from ever seeing the beauty of now.