A personal invitation from Pastor Phil on behalf of our entire congregation.

Dear friends of Ravenswood Covenant Church,

I want to invite you to a holy lent.

Lent is a period of forty days, excluding Sundays, in which much of the Church worldwide observes a season of penitence and prayer, reflection and renewal, as we refocus on what it means to be a follower of Christ. This year we enter that season the 5^th of March, on Ash Wednesday.

As the gospel of John introduces us to the life of Christ it says, what has come into being in Christ is life, “and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  The invitation of Lent for people of faith is to renew our faith and join Jesus in lives like his that bring light into dark places.

And so we begin this journey with two services of the imposition of ashes.  Both will be on Ash Wednesday, March 5^th.   One service will be in the morning at 6:45 am at Ravenswood Covenant and the other at 7:30 pm will be a combined service at Immanuel Covenant church.  Immanuel Covenant Church is at 5210 N Washtenaw Avenue, right next to Covenant Home.  This gathering will include the Ravenswood, Grace and Immanuel Covenant churches.  On this day, together we will “confront our own mortality and confess our sin before God within the community of faith,” even as we begin to celebrate new beginnings in the faith as we journey towards Easter.

And so here I offer to all of us the words of invitation from our service of worship on Ash Wednesday:  “We are invited, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.  And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, we now kneel before the Lord, our Maker and Redeemer.”

God’s peace,

Pastor Phil