Wednesday, March 05, 2025, 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Room(s): Sanctuary
Children will have the opportunity for special prayer experience to start the Lenten season following the Children’s Message of the Ash Wednesday service.
A Brief Explanation of Ash Wednesday and the Season of Lent
- Excepted from The Worship Sourcebook
Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. By the fourth century the Western church determined that the Lenten period of fasting and renewal should correspond to Christ’s forty-day fast (Matt. 4:2), and, by counting forty days back from Easter (excluding Sundays, which remain “Feast” and Resurrection Celebration days), arrived at the Wednesday seven weeks before Easter.
At one time Lent was primarily viewed as a period during which converts prepared for baptism on Easter Sunday, but later the season became a general time of penitence and renewal for all Christians. Thus Ash Wednesday became the day that marked the beginning of the Lenten renewal. The aim of Ash Wednesday worship is threefold: to meditate on our mortality, sinfulness, and need of a savior; to renew our commitment to daily repentance in the Lenten season and in all of life; and to remember with confidence and gratitude that Christ has conquered death and sin. Ash Wednesday worship, then, is filled with gospel truth. It is a witness to the power and beauty of our union with Christ and to the daily dying and rising with Christ that this entails.
Jonah follows through on the second prompting from the Lord despite his first failed fishy attempt to go his own way. The reluctant prophet will become the most successful one in the OT by the utterance of one sentence (3:4). Jonah’s turning back to God will lead to his enemy’s repentance. With the prospect of death, the Ninevites turn to God by dressing in sackcloth and sitting in Ashes.
During our Ash Wednesday service, we will be invited to ask the question: “What does repentance look like, and how does it compel us and others to turn to Christ?”