If you attend a church that observes the liturgical calendar, this past weekend you may have noticed the sanctuary decorated with flowers, clergy clad in pink vestments, and the organist may have been allowed her chance at that instrumental solo she has been longing to launch into.
Chick-fil-A is working to make sure that customers celebrating Lent can still come to eat at the Christian fast-food chicken joint by offering fish.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the forty-day period in the church calendar known as Lent, a time of preparation leading up to Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday.
Chances are you’ll see a bunch of folks walking around with shmutz on their foreheads this Wednesday (Feb. 14). What does having a dirty forehead have to do with being a Christian and why this ritual is gaining in popularity? What is the significance behind Ash Wednesday and why do Christians still attend Ash Wednesday services? Even if you attend one at your church you may not know the history behind it.
Well, here is what you need to know:
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As valuable as these acts of personal sacrifice, spiritual development, and contrition are, Christianity also exhorts us to energetically work to help those in need.
Many approach filling out March Madness brackets with something like religious fervor.
Fasting can seem like a lost practice today--perhaps something not relevant to our Christian faith in the modern world, but as long as we are tempted to fill our lives with other things that tend to crowd Christ out, there will be a need for such spiritual disciplines as fasting.
Ash Wednesday somberly reminds us that we’re all going to die. But it also reminds us of something much more important.
