On the way to Easter ….Rebooting Lent!

by Lilly Lewin

Freerange Friday is coming even though this first post is a little late!

It’s April 1st and we have fifteen days til Easter Sunday!
So for me it’s a great time to re-start Lent and re-boot my Lenten practice!
Maybe you started on Ash Wednesday and you’ve been doing great with your Lenten practices and/or your Lenten fasting. This year I haven’t been very consistent with either one.
So hooray for April 1st and the start of a new month!

I believe in lots of grace so it’s never to late to start a practice or to decide to do something that draws us closer to God. I see Lent as an opportunity to fall more in love with Jesus on our way to Easter Sunday, a lesson I learned from Fr. Edward Hays.

One of my Lenten practices this year was to start writing again, or put it another way, I was going to “give up” not writing for Lent!
Well sadly this didn’t happen, but during our visit last week, my friend Christine Sine suggested I start Freerange Friday.

So it’s Friday and here it goes, some freerange worship ideas for you to do as you make your way towards Easter and maybe a re-boot of Lent!

First a little background. Holy Week begins on April 9th (this year ) with Palm Sunday and the days leading up to Easter on April 16th All the worship gatherings of Holy Week are used to re-tell the story of the last week in Jesus’ life. Often on Palm Sunday in many churches you get the entire Holy Week story because we figure people are sadly too busy to come back to church during the week. But too often we cram too much into one day and we miss the process of re-telling and remembering the story of Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, on his way to the cross.

I believe we can and need to remember the story and we can all do this right in our homes. Here are three different things you can do to engage Jesus on his way to the cross and ultimately the empty tomb. The first is rather simple, the second involves a cup, and the third involves creating a centerpiece to use on your dining table, or on your coffee table. I’d love to hear how it goes. And I’d love you to keep in touch at freerangeworship.com and by emailing me at freerangeworship@gmail.com

LAST WEEK ON EARTH

Get out some paper or your journal. If you like to draw you can get out your pencils or crayons etc. and draw in response to these questions. You can do this on your own, or with your family, with your roommates, your small group or even with your whole church community or youth group.
This is actually the first prayer station found in my “journey to the cross” prayer experience.
LAST WEEK ON EARTH….Consider Jesus as he makes his way to Jerusalem and then consider what you would do if it was your last week on planet earth.

What if you knew it was your last week on earth? How would you feel? Where would you be? Who would you want to spend the week hanging out with? Would you do anything differently? Why or Why not?
How would you want to spend your last days on Earth? Write about this and then if you are doing this with other people you might give them the opportunity to share what they wrote.

A second part of this experience would be to create a post card or poster of where you’d like to spend your last week on Earth.

You can keep this experience going by reading a bit of the story of Jesus’s last week on earth in your bible or on you phone with a bible app like Bible Gateway. What were the ways Jesus spent his last week on Earth? Did he change anything? What do you learn about Jesus during this week?

Praying with your Cup.

The second idea is something you can do on your own using your coffee cup, red solo cup, your Starbucks cup or your tea cup each day. Check this out in the article I wrote for youth specialties.

Create a Holy Week Centerpiece.

Finally, you can create a centerpiece to use in the next two weeks on your way to Easter. You can do this on your own, with your family, with your kids, roommates and even with your whole church community. This is long because it has all the supplies you will need and the meditation and activity to use with each day. Check out this blog post and I can also send you a pdf if you’d like to have one to print out.