Into Lent …

I always look forward to Lent as an opportunity! By this I mean not that I’m all that keen merely to be “giving things up,” but rather to use the time to get to grips with things that otherwise I might put off - like reading, praying, thinking things through in a more considered way than normal.

This year I’m going to do that partly through a Lent Course running at both St. Cuthbert’s (in the Vicarage on Wednesdays at 7.30pm) and St. John’s, Castleside (after the 10am Wednesday Eucharist - about 10.45 in the church’s Community Room). I hope you’ll join me.

I’m calling the Course “A Land and its People,” and I’ll be looking at different aspects of life in the country we tend to call “the Holy Land.” There’ll be pictures from Israel / Palestine, both of religious sites and of everyday life, to help us - but I hope we’ll reflect further using Scripture, shared experience and prayer to ask what it means to be a Christian in our own land. Please do join us at either venue from 4 March.

There’ll be other opportunities for deepening our faith during Lent, but these are the sessions of the Lent Course as they might work out:

·        4 March     Holy Land or Secular Nation?

·        11 March   The Pilgrim in the Land - from Galilee to Northumbria

·        18 March   The Peoples of the Land - citizens and exiles

·        25 March   People at Prayer - their experience and ours

·        1 April         The Way of the Cross & an Empty Tomb

Wishing you all the blessings of a Holy Lent…                       Martin Jackson