We began Lent last week with our Ash Wednesday service when we were reminded that God remains with us throughout our lives and in the life to come. Our theme came from the first Beatitude (Jesus’ blessings in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5):
Blessed are the poor in spirit,for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.
God is with those who are poor and those who seem to have little spirit left in their lives. God is with us when we are feeling that way. Even when we face the death of a loved one or our own mortality, God’s love never leaves us, and we have faith that we will someday rise in God’s loving presence. As I marked the foreheads of those who worshipped on Ash Wednesday with ashes, I reminded them of these beliefs as I said:
From dust you were made,
to dust you shall return,
and from the dust you shall rise.
On Sunday (the first Sunday of Lent), we focused on the second Beatitude:
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
In my sermon, I talked about the ways we experience grief in our lives and pointed to Psalm 6, Luke 22 and Matthew 5, to learn what we can from the Scriptures about grief. Here are some of the highlight of the sermon:
- Grief is a very real part of life, and there is no point in denying it or trying to pretend that we never grieve. King David is a great example of someone who openly mourns in God’s presence; and we see this openness before God over and over again in the Psalms.
- Grief comes to us in many different ways. Sometimes we can’t get to sleep—like King David—no matter how tired we feel; and at other times sleep seems to be all we want to do—like Jesus’ disciples when they knew he was about to be arrested.
- God is with those who grieve. We find great comfort in our grief knowing that it is never God’s way of punishing us, and in knowing that God loves us and blesses us in the midst of our greatest sadness.
I hope you will join us on Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. as we share a simple meal together and then reflect and discuss the theme of the previous Sunday.
I also hope to see you at CHURCH ON THE BEACH this Sunday. See below for the details.
Aloha nui!
Kahu Alan Akana
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Click HERE to see a video of Sunday’s sermon. Videos of Kahu’s sermons are available most weeks. You can find them on our church website <www.koloaunionchurch.org> and on our weekly e-news. Please share these videos with friends and invite them to church. You can also subscribe on YouTube anytime you watch a sermon; that way you can easily watch any past sermon and even receive a notification when a new sermon is posted.
To see a video of last week’s sermon, click HERE. (It was uploaded a bit late and was not included on the Weekly News.)
“A Message from Kahu Alan Akana” is provided most weeks by the Kahu (Pastor) of Koloa Union Church, a congregation of the United Church of Christ (UCC), a member of the Kauai Association and Hawaii Conference.
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