Lent & Spring 2026

So, how’s your Lenten journey going? Lent can be a confusing time. Lent this year is a time filled with conflicting imagery and events. Spring with flowering trees, warmer weather, birds singing, and signs of new life all around stands side by side with news of war, unrest, conflict, hunger, senseless death, and growing distrust. We live in a fallen, troubled, fragile yet amazingly beautiful and resilient world.

We look inward over this solemn time with introspection, prayer, humility, and sacrifice. Yet, Lent, like the rest of the year, is also a time for looking outward, beyond the inward self to work with fellow believers and others of good will to help neighbor and make our community and world a better place for everyone. We look inward and give thanks, and we look outward and lend a hand. We gather on Sundays and Wednesdays to, as Pastor Townsend recently related to us, charge our spiritual batteries. By communal worship, prayer and partaking of the sacraments we charge our spiritual batteries to strengthen self and be better able to serve others. We are a community of faith comprised of unique individuals each bearing unique gifts and abilities from God through the Spirit. St. Paul speaks of these gifts in First Corinthians Chapter Twelve. “To each is given a manifestation of the spirit for the common good.” 1 Cor:12:7

Collectively we are able to do more good than we can individually. Leaders, activists, visionaries as diverse as Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., the Kennedy brothers, Nelson Mandela, Golda Meir, and Dolores Huerta understood the power of people working together. Dolores Huerta is well known for the line “Si, se puede”, Yes, we can. Our ELCA church body refers to such efforts as God’s work, our hands. The tee shirts we often wear when volunteering bear a quote from Luther that reads, “God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbor does.” With our diaper program, food gathering, expanding relationships with the Tahoe Park Neighborhood Association, the Sacramento Food Bank, SALT (Sacramento Area Lutherans Together), Lutheran Social Services and ongoing efforts to better communicate and share the Gospel message we are expanding our service and outreach efforts. We are doing our best to say yes, we can.

So, yes, Lent is a mysterious, at times somber, ultimately joyful (we know Holy Week and Easter are coming!) period where we simultaneously take time for inner reflection and then continue to reach out to our neighbors and the world around us. Let us make a commitment to carry on together with the understanding we are individually and collectively a work in progress. Athletes, musicians, physicians, artists are all continually working to become better and improve their abilities. I’ll close with a quote on that theme from Martin Luther that Pastor Townsend often employs and reminds us of.