Intro: Habits of Life
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday which falls on March 6th, this year. Lent is the 40-day period in the church calendar leading up to Easter. You won’t find Lent in the Bible and its observance is not a requirement for Christian faithfulness. However, throughout the history of the church Lent has provided a helpful opportunity for preparation and repentance ahead of the church’s celebration of Christ’s sacrificial death and victorious resurrection.
During Lent this year at City Church we will focus our attention on the theme of Habits of Life. In our Sunday services we will explore together some of the core habits that define Christian faithfulness, rooting our study in the practices of the early church as described by the book of Acts in chapters 2-4.
As an accompaniment to our Sunday services, we will publish an ancillary online devotional. Similar to devotionals we have produced in the past during the seasons of Advent and Lent, this year’s Habits of Life devotional is designed to help form you more fully into Christian maturity.
The devotional will begin with a post on Ash Wednesday, the day that marks the start of Lent. A new entry will then be posted each Sunday morning during the six weeks leading up to Easter. Finally, during Holy Week (the week that stretches from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday) we will feature a new post each day, as our anticipation of Christ’s death and resurrection heightens.
The devotional will feature reflections written by the City Church staff and other members of our community. We believe in the value of varied voices bearing testimony to God’s multivalent grace at work in our lives. Each post will focus on a habit (of one kind or another) that has nudged us to live with greater Christlikeness. Each reflection also will be accompanied by a work of visual art and a song, out of the recognition that we are sensory beings who learn and are formed by more than just words on a page (or screen, as the case may be).
Our hope is that these Lenten reflections will help remind you of Jesus’s stunning sacrifice on the cross and help prepare you for the astounding news of his Easter resurrection. We also hope they will cause you to consider your own habits, causing you to both imagine and enact new habits more fully in line with the resurrection life of Christ.