Ash Wednesday
Mar. 9th, 2011 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamflowerI attended Ash Wednesday service tonight.
I've decided that for Lent, I will post something each day, something that inspires me or makes me think or touches me in some way...
It may be a scripture quotation, a hymn, a bit of liturgy, or something else. I hope that focussing on doing something, instead of not doing something will help me get in the proper frame of mind.
Tonight, I will post the Prayer of Confession that all read together during the service:
Almight and Merciful God, in a thousand different ways, our lives demonstrate how we have been lulled by the ways of sin and death. We refuse to offer or seek forgiveness, we cling to resentment, fear and shame; we misuse and abuse one another and your creation; we obsess over what is trivial and ignore what matters. Don't let us waste this life. Forgive us our sin and open us to the way of salvation. In your mercy, Amen.
For me, as a Methodist, a Prayer of Confession fosters a sense of "We are all in this together. None of us is any better (or any worse) than the rest of us." Of course, each of us has our own private failings to consider as well, but there are wrongs we have done collectively, as a body-- failing to speak or to act when injustice is done, or when a need is there that we overlook...
It is a good way to begin the Lenten season.
I've decided that for Lent, I will post something each day, something that inspires me or makes me think or touches me in some way...
It may be a scripture quotation, a hymn, a bit of liturgy, or something else. I hope that focussing on doing something, instead of not doing something will help me get in the proper frame of mind.
Tonight, I will post the Prayer of Confession that all read together during the service:
Almight and Merciful God, in a thousand different ways, our lives demonstrate how we have been lulled by the ways of sin and death. We refuse to offer or seek forgiveness, we cling to resentment, fear and shame; we misuse and abuse one another and your creation; we obsess over what is trivial and ignore what matters. Don't let us waste this life. Forgive us our sin and open us to the way of salvation. In your mercy, Amen.
For me, as a Methodist, a Prayer of Confession fosters a sense of "We are all in this together. None of us is any better (or any worse) than the rest of us." Of course, each of us has our own private failings to consider as well, but there are wrongs we have done collectively, as a body-- failing to speak or to act when injustice is done, or when a need is there that we overlook...
It is a good way to begin the Lenten season.