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A Note from the Pastor
Thank you for visiting Amlin UMC’s web site. On behalf of the entire congregation I extend to you an always-open invitation to participate in worship and all church events/activities. Whether you are a first-time visitor, or have been part of the congregation a week, a month, or a lifetime, you are welcome to participate fully in the ministries and activities of the church.
May our experiences at Amlin UMC enrich our spiritual life, draw us closer to God, connect us with friends in Christ, and empower us to make the world a better place.
Rev. Casey Wilson
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Blessings for the Lenten Journey
What’s your favorite fairy tale? Snow White, Harry Potter, The Princess and the Frog, Aladdin? We tell these stories generation to generation, and each generation adds new stories to the library of fantasy. Have you ever considered why fairy tales are such popular and enduring stories?
Frederick Buechner suggests that the reason we like fairy tales and tell them over and over is that something inside us believes, or wants to believe, that the world as we know it is not the whole story. We long for a different, a better reality. We hope that death is not the end, that the universe is something more than what we can see and know. So we keep spinning and repeating stories that hold the promise of another world.
In addition to the transformation of the world around us, fairy tales are also about the transformation of the central characters: frogs become princes, ugly ducklings become swans, wooden marionettes become real boys.
Like fairy tales, the Gospel promises the reality of another world and the transformation of people. The difference between fairy tales and the Gospel is that the Gospel is true!
After forty days of prayer and preparation, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the Gospel, by announcing the existence and availability of another dimension of existence, another world. “The kingdom of God has come near,” he said. “Repent, and believe in the good news.”
The Good News – the word we translate ‘gospel’ – is that this broken world as we know it is not the whole story. There is another realm, a transformed reality, the Kingdom of God – and it has come near. It is closer than you ever imagined, and it is available to you. You can live in it now.
And when you choose to recognize, accept, and live in the reality of God’s Kingdom, you change. Your attitude, priorities, values, thinking, and behavior begin to undergo a transformation. The Good News is not only that there is more to this world than meets the eye, but also that there is more to you than meets the eye. You will not always be as you are now. There is real hope and definite possibility that you will be something incomparably better.
The Good News is that God holds out to you the possibility of transformation. Lent is a time of preparation for the realization of that possibility and the fulfillment of that promise. Lent is a season in which we interrupt our busy schedules and intentionally listen and look for the presence of God through prayer, Bible reading, fasting (or “giving up” something we enjoy), service, giving, worship, and other ways.
As important as those spiritual disciplines are, we have to remember that they are a means to an end. The point of praying or reading the Bible or giving up something for Lent is not to prove to God or ourselves or anyone else how holy we are. Our task is to use these activities to create opportunities for God to work. The point of praying and reading and sacrificing is to pay attention to the work of God and to put yourself in a place where transformation can happen.
May the words of Scripture, the fellowship of friends, and the movement of the Spirit, bless your Lenten journey of prayer, repentance, and sacrifice, so that you can better understand, appreciate, and accept Christ’s journey of sacrifice, death, and resurrection.
Pastor Casey
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Disaster Relief
To contribute to ongoing relief efforts in the U.S. and around the world through the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), make checks payable to Amlin UMC and write UMCOR in the memo line. To designate a specific relief effort or to contribute directly to UMCOR, visit www.gbgm-umc.org/umcor. Thank you.
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