Wednesday Evening Prayer Service & Observing Lent at St Matthew 2024

Can We…Love?

Our theme for Lent is “Can we…” Each week our readings will pose to us a question of how we respond to God’s calling in our life. Taken together, we see what it looks like to respond to God’s grace with love for God and love for the world, thus leading us to the question of “Can we love God’s world?” 

  • February 18 Can We Persist?
  • February 25 Can We Trust?
  • March 3 Can We Follow?
  • March 10 Can We See?
  • March 17 Can We Respond

Along with these themes for worship on Sunday morning, there will be several other ongoing devotional practices for Lent around the theme.

  1. Can we…address hunger?  During Lent, bring in canned food for the Ministerium Food Pantry. We will collected the cans in the narthex. Let’s see how big of a stack we are able to build. The food pantry particularly needs proteins – beans, tuna, peanut butter, etc. – but all canned foods are welcome.
  2. Can we … Love? Midweek worship. We will have Wednesday evening worship at 7:30 throughout Lent. The themes will follow the theme from the previous Sunday, with readings from the book of 1 Peter.
  3. We will have Adult Forum education time each week of Lent. See the Adult Forum schedule for details

Lent Devotion

This year’s Lent devotional booklet comes from Wild Goose Publishing, the publishing arm of the Iona spiritual community in Scotland. The book is called Fasts and Feasts. The devotions are very short poems of fasting and feasting, helping us to see Lenten disciplines in new light. Booklets will be available in the narthex to be picked up beginning February 4.

Wednesday Evening Prayers

Evening Prayer will be held on Wednesdays during Lent, following the “Can We” theme from the previous Sunday. Worship will be at 7:30 p.m. in-person and available streaming through our YouTube channel.

  • February 21 Can we persist? 1 Peter 1:3-9
  • February 28 Can we trust? 1 Peter 1:13-16, 22-25
  • March 6 Can we follow? 1 Peter 2:1-10
  • March 13 Can we see? 1 Peter 3:8-12
  • March 20 Can we respond? 1 Peter 4:12-19

Due to Ash Wednesday, the monthly contemplative prayer time will be held at 8:00 on Wednesday, February 21.