Pastor’s Corner: Social Devotional

February 10, 2021

Lent begins in just seven days – as I said in my sermon last week, however, with the pandemic still at large in the world, I feel as if last year’s Lent never quite ended. We continue to endure a lot of deprivation, and the discipline of distance is wearing awfully thin.

That’s the primary reason for providing this year’s Lenten devotional offering, a “Lenten Social Devotional.” Instead of giving you spiritual things to read, I encourage you to think about spiritual things to talk about. And: find someone to talk about them with.

Lent is so often pictured as lonely and gloomy. I grant you that considering the state of one’s spirits can be gloomy, but I would rather one approached it as exciting. “I’m going to lift my spirit closer to God today,” you might tell yourself. “How amazing is that?”

More to the point for this year of social separation, it does not need to be lonely. We have experienced a great deal of solitary living in the last year. We’ve done it to preserve our physical health – thank God we did – but there have been consequences to our mental health and our spiritual health. We need to attend to those as best we can while avoiding transmission of COVID-19 viruses.

So find a partner, someone living near or far. Find a partner with whom you want to share your spiritual journey for a while, and whom you trust to offer you true companionship along the way. Prepare to be a good partner. Ask questions that will deepen not your understanding, but your partner’s. Be comforting when the way is painful. Share the joy when the way is bright. You will have someone else’s spirit in your keeping. Be gentle. Be tender. Be loving.

And may your find a partner who is gentle, tender, and loving with your spirit, too.

With aloha,

Pastor Eric