This Week's Update

Greetings in Christ!

The Lenten services have been wonderful, both as we experience the worship styles and the worship spaces of our friends in ministry across the NRV. I hope you will join us in the following weeks, especially because two of them (3/8 and 3/22) will be in our sanctuary!

Reminders

 This week’s Lenten service is 7pm Sunday here at CLC. Join us!

 We continue to collect items for LWR Health Kits during Lent, including toothbrushes, nail clippers, bath-sized bar soap, combs, and bath towels.

 Our next Healing Service is Sunday March 22nd at 7pm, here at CLC, with a dinner preceding at 6pm. This is also our last joint Lenten service of the year.

Devotional

In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus turns over tables in the temple out of disgust that the temple became a place concerned more with profit than prophecy, more attuned to making money than making disciples. Jesus displays some righteous anger. And yes, some anger is, indeed, righteous.

Of course, we often feel justified in our anger. Someone cuts us off in traffic when we legally have the right of way. A waitress takes inconceivable amounts of time to bring us a refill. Family and friends never seem to call. And we’re angry about it all.

Yet, our anger often fails to consider the others involved. Who knows whether that driver saw us in the first place? Is this waitress overwhelmed with a full restaurant or trying to make ends meet at home? Have we made any attempts to reach out to our loved ones in order to rekindle the relationship?

Part of the Gospel this Sunday is the truth that there is such a thing is righteous anger. The other part of the Gospel is that God’s anger is righteous. We must be self-aware enough to realize that our anger only becomes righteous when it comes alongside God’s deep desire for justice and mercy.



Grace and peace,

Pastor Andrew Tucker