Lent is a season of the Christian year where Christians focus on simple living, prayer, and fasting in order to grow closer to God. It’s the 40 days before Easter. Lent excludes Sundays because every Sunday is like a little Easter. Basically, it’s about one-tenth of a year (like a tithe of time). Mardi Gras is the day before Lent, which begins with Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday begins with a service where we recognize our mortality, repent of our sins, and return to our loving God. Our Ash Wednesday service will be held on March 5th at 6 p.m. in Hinton Hall, located in the Sheldon Family Life Center. We recognize life as a precious gift from God, and we re-turn our lives towards Jesus Christ. We may make resolutions and commit to change our lives over the next forty days so that we might be more like Christ. In an Ash Wednesday service, a minister marks the sign of the cross on people’s foreheads, using ashes.

Why should I “do” Lent, and how do I start? Are you searching for something more? Tired of running in circles, but not really living life with direction, purpose or passion?  It’s pretty easy to get caught up in the drama of classes, relationships, family, and work. Our lives are filled with distractions that take us away from living a life with Christ. We try to fill the emptiness inside us with mindless activities, meaningless chatter, stimulants, alcohol, too many activities or other irrelevant stuff. We run away from life and from God.

Lent is a great time to “repent” — to return to God and refocus our lives to be more in line with Jesus. It’s a 40-day trial run in changing your lifestyle and letting God change your heart. You might try one of these practices for Lent:

• FASTING: You can fast by cutting out things in your life that distract you from God. Some Christians use the whole 40 days to fast from candy, TV, soft drinks, or something else as a way to purify their bodies and lives. You might skip one meal a day and use that time to pray instead. Or you can give up some activity like worry or reality TV to spend time outside enjoying God’s creation.  What do you need to let go of or “fast” from in order to focus on God? How can you simplify your life in terms of what you eat, wear or do?
• SERVICE: Some Christians take something on for Christ. You can collect food for the needy, volunteer once a week to tutor children, or work for reform and justice in your community. You can commit to help a different stranger, coworker or friend everyday of Lent. Serving others is one way we serve God.
• PRAYER: Christians also use Lent as a time of intentional prayer. Pray while you walk, create music or art as a prayer to God, or savor a time of quiet listening. All can be ways of becoming more in tune with God.
  

How will you use your time to grow closer to God?

To download a copy of this information, as well as Top Ten Things You Can Try for the Lenten Season and Additional Resources for the Season of Lent, please click on LENT 2025.

Source: ResourceUMC.org

10.  Try an electronic fast. Give up TV, social media, texting, tweeting, email and all things electronic for one day every week.  Use the time to read and pray.

9.  Start a prayer rhythm. Each day of Lent, pray for another person.

8.  Go deeper. Take an online course as a part of your Lenten discipline.

7.  Forgive someone who doesn’t deserve it (maybe even yourself). Study a book on forgiveness, such as Forgiveness, the Passionate Journey: Nine Steps of Forgiving through Jesus’ Beatitudes by Flora Slosson Wuellner.

6.  Give up soft drinks, fast food, tea or coffee. Give the money you save to help folks in your community or in a different part of the world who are in crisis.

5.  Create a daily quiet time. Spend 10 minutes a day in silence and prayer. Read a daily devotional for the season of Lent. See how it can help you add spiritual practice to your daily life beyond Lent.

4. Cultivate a life of gratitude. Write someone a thank-you letter each week, and be aware of how many people have helped you along the way. Learn more about the spiritual practice of gratitude.

3.  Visit Sight Psalms (www.upperroom.org/sight_psalms) and spend time in visual meditation and prayer.

2.  Volunteer one hour or more each week with a local shelter, community food bank, tutoring program, nursing home or prison ministry.

1.  Pray for others you see as you walk to and from classes or drive to and from work.

Source: ResourceUMC.org

The amazing volunteers of Duluth First UMC’s Louise McDaniel Memorial Library have created a wonderful Lenten Devotional Calendar for you to use to enrich your spiritual renewal during this season of Lent. Through the use of the Lenten Devotional Calendar, a daily scripture reading will help you to focus on one of the three Pillars of Lent:

• Prayer (GOD)...A practice of reading and meditating on God’s Word and attending church;
• Fasting (Self)... A practice of self-denial, or giving up something;
• Almsgiving (Others)... A practice of giving to those in need.
  

The Lenten Devotional Calendars will be available with worship service handout materials on Sunday, March 2nd, at the church’s library, at the Information Centers around the church, and available for download by clicking on LENTEN CALENDAR. Thank you to our church’s library volunteers for this wonderful Lenten gift to their church family and community!

The season of Lent will soon be underway and students in our church’s Youth Ministry are excited to share their Lenten devotional videos with you! Every Wednesday (March 5th through April 16th) during Lent, we will post a short devotional video by one of our students on our Youth Ministry’s YouTube channel - dfumcstudents.

The youth would love for you to journey with them by watching and sharing these videos with others! Also, please click on the SUBSCRIBE button to get notifications whenever they post new content on their YouTube channel.

Lent Devotional - Week 1: Chase Parrish

The Worship Committee invites you to remember or honor a loved one with a lily on Easter. The lilies will be used to adorn the Sanctuary and Hinton Hall on Easter Sunday, April 20th. The cost per plant is $20. You may pick up your lily/lilies following the Easter morning service you attend. Printed copies of the Easter Lily Remembrance/Honor listings will be available at the Contemporary Worship and Traditional Worship services on Easter morning.

All proceeds go to Seeds of Hope, whose funds are used to help meet the needs of God’s people living in Duluth and Suwanee--often strangers, widows, orphans, homeless, those who are lost, and those who are without hope--who come to Duluth First United Methodist Church seeking assistance. In 2024 the number of assistance requests through Seeds of Hope were higher than in past years. If you would like to contribute extra above/beyond the cost of your lily/lilies, we thank you for your additional support of Seeds of Hope.

You can place your order for lilies online with a credit/debit card payments. To order online please click on EASTER LILY ONLINE ORDER.

If you wish to pay by check or cash, order forms will be available:

• At the Information Centers;
• Available for download by clicking on LILY;
• Available in the Sunday Orders of Worship for all services on March 30th, and April 6th, and 13th.
  

Please place your form/forms, along with a check made payable to Duluth First United Methodist Church and marked Easter Lilies in the memo section, in the Church Staff Drop Box located in the Atrium, or send it to Duluth First United Methodist Church, Attn. Ken Willi, 3208 Duluth Hwy. 120, Duluth, GA 30096. NOTE: All orders must be received by Sunday, April 13th, at 5:00 p.m.

Lent is coming very soon, and you know what that means. Be on the lookout for “hidden” Jesus figurines around the church. Same rules as last year - keep one or two for yourself, and then re-hide the rest of the ones that you find!