From the DOD for Spire 03-02-09:
My cell phone I have had for almost 2 years finally died. I loved it. It was a simple bottom of the line phone but it never let me down. That is until it quit working. I’m not due for a new phone at a discounted rate until April, so I am using a friend’s spare phone. It’s one of those sweet newer models with all kinds of cool features. I’d wanted to try one out and she gave me the opportunity. It does have a lot of nifty features and it looks nice…. But it doesn’t close. It’s not a flip phone like I’m used to. The numbers are exposed. Have you seen that cell phone commercial on television where the man keeps accidentally calling his wife from his cell phone when he sits on it? She tells him that he “b***dialed“her again. Funny stuff. Until it happens to you. A friend of mine called me the other day laughing her head off… Apparently I had dialed John and Alonna Hughes’ number “inadvertently” when they were not home. She knew this because I left a message; or my derriere did; which was me yelling “LYDIA!!! Go potty if you’re gonna potty before we go! NOW!!! We are waiting on YOU!!! Hurry up and potty before we go!!! I mean it!!!” I sheepishly asked if I had been using my devil voice scream. She assured me that I sounded like the majority of mothers who are trying to get their children out the door when they are in a hurry. I want to be a calm, gentle mother. I don’t want my kids to grow up and think of me when they see “Rosanne” reruns. I want to be more like Jesus. Isn’t that what Lent is about? I want to share something I read on Spirithome.com: “Lent is the season for the experience of giving your life over -- in each moment, bodily, deliberately, to Christ and to what the Spirit is showing you. God wants you to surrender yourself, and let the Spirit work in you. In Lent, we take responsibility for our acts and thoughts, and treat certain of those as the killers they are. Lent is self-discovery of the parts of ourselves we don't want to discover, through prayer, fasting, and other disciplines. It is the opening up, the turning over to God, the repenting of our sins, the turning away from that which does not please God. Yet there is just a glimpse of Easter through the heavy clouds of Good Friday -- that Christ has taken the burden, and you don't have to carry it anymore. Don't you want to follow that kind of a God?” I know that I do…. Peace and Grace to you this season of Lent. –Rachel
We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, "You're going to have a big family, Abraham!" Romans 4: 17-18

From the DOD for Spire 02-09-09: Ash Wednesday is a day of repentance and it marks the beginning of Lent. It occurs 40 days before Easter (excluding Sundays). The observation of the liturgical year was new to me when I first came to this Church in the early 1990s and it intrigued me. Following the Christian year has made worship a much more profound experience for me. I’ll never forget the first time Mary and Lydia participated in our Ash Wednesday service. They were not too sure about whether they wanted to take the imposition of ashes. I had tried to prepare them for it, explaining that it was very important that they remain quiet especially at the close of the service when we received the ashes. Our turn to get up and go forward arrived. Mary was with me while Lydia was 2 or 3 people behind us with Ms. Audrey and their grandmother. She was still trying to decide if she wanted to do this. Aside from the hushed sound of people getting up and making their way through the line, the sanctuary was still. As we neared the front of the Church we could barely hear Pastor Roy as he placed ashes and said “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” During this somber moment, Mary turned to see Lydia in line and called out “Hey Lydia! Are you gonna get a cross on your noggin?” So much for somber… I recently read a sermon by a man named Jon M. Walton. In it he states “Ash Wednesday reminds us of two things, that we are dust and to dust we shall return… And the ashes remind us that we are fallen and we can’t get up on our own. We need God’s help. We need God’s forgiveness for our sin. And we need God’s love, like a mother who gathers her children to her to nurture and protect them. That is finally the hope that is scratched in the ash on our foreheads, that God’s love has reached all the way to earth, to the dust from which we have been made, and made of the dust the peace of heart and spirit that we seek. Made like with tender mercy and loving care just like that dust God took in hand to shape the first creatures, man and woman. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We may be dust, but dust that we are, we are loved... loved, made whole, and made new by the resurrection of Jesus who has shown us in his death and resurrection that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing can separate us from God’s love. That is the secret scratched in the ash and imposed on our foreheads. Nothing can separate us from God’s love.” Peace and Grace to you as we approach Lent, Rachel P.S. I found Jon Walton’s sermon here: http://www.fpcnyc.org/sermons/2004/pdfs/040225.pdf