Lenten Season Begins!

As we approach the coming celebration of the highest holiday in Christianity, Resurrection Sunday/Easter/Paschal, we prepare ourselves by spending 40 days in preparation both individually and corporately for celebrating the defeat of the Curse. Individually many people choose to forsake something of worth as an act of sacrifice and fasting, and corporately many churches are teaching series based on the Passion of Christ. For example, we are taking our students through a biblical look at Jesus as the Lamb of God as seen throughout Scripture. Tonight we start with the provision of a sacrifice in Eden for the sin of Adam and Eve and the future-looking promise that one day a sacrifice was coming that would defeat the Serpent and reverse the curse God had placed on the earth.

A thought for meditation today comes from the hymn "The Church's One Foundation"

The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation
By water and the Word:
From heav'n He came and sought her
To be His holy Bride;
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.

Elect from every nation,
Yet one o'er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.

'Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace for evermore;
Till, with the vision glorious,
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won:
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we,
Like them, the meek and lowly,
In love may dwell with Thee.