Here are my thoughts for this 1^st Sunday of Lent, 13 March 2011 (not sure why but I had this as 2005 when I first posted it). The Scriptures for this Sunday are Genesis 2: 15 – 17, 3: 1 – 7; Romans 5: 12 – 19; and Matthew 4: 1 – 11.

I presented these thoughts at the beginning worship for the Lenten School, a collection of classes on a variety of topics. This year, we had a basic course in lay speaking, a course in sermon planning, and advanced courses in preaching, caring ministries, spiritual gifts, a study of Ecclesiastes, and Christian Stewardship. There is also a six-week Lenten Study and a “rock camp” for youth.

We are all on a journey. For some, it is not just a journey of time but place. After all, unless you happen to live here at Grace UMC, you have traveled some distance to be here.

But during Lent, this journey becomes a journey of the soul as we seek to find out more about ourselves and who we are to be in this world. We know where this journey began and why. It is a journey that began for all mankind in the Garden so many years ago.

We also know that this some forty days from now we will be in another Garden. As Paul wrote to the Romans, just as one died for doing wrong and getting us all into trouble with sin and death, so did another person get it right and get us out of trouble.

But we struggle with those days in between. Our journey confuses at times; at times we are not even sure where we are.

And if we get confused and we know where we started and where we are going, think of those today that are searching for those central points of life.

So we are here, seeking and hoping, being tested by society in ways much like Jesus was those first forty days of His ministry.

Our fear perhaps is that we can’t answer the Tempter as Jesus did. But we forget that once Jesus as like us, a student studying the Scriptures. Have we forgotten the young boy of 12 who engaged the teachers in thoughtful and intellectual discussion?

Can it be that what we learn during the next six weeks will open our minds and hearts just as it must have done for Jesus and those there in the Temple that day?

And lest we forget, we are United Methodists where education is as much a foundation of our faith as reason, experience, and tradition.

For some, the journey begins; for others, it continues. And though forty days from now, this gathering ends, the journey continued.

Because there will be times when we will be like Stephen and encounter some one searching just as we once did. And you will be able to help them on their way.

So let the journey begin.