Pastor's Mutterings. There was a devout rabbi who once said, “In my youth, fired with the love of God, I thought I would convert the whole world. But soon I learned it would be quite enough to convert the people who lived in my village. When that did not happen, I decided to try to reform the members of my own household. I couldn't convert them either. Finally it dawned on me that I must work only upon myself. But I have stumbled in my attempts to accomplish even that.”

While the world is surely filled with great injustice, and there are endless lists of causes that we might take up, world reform can only begin with a serious attempt to reform ourselves. The world will find itself being changed at the speed of each personal conversion. That is the reason for undertaking another Lent. We feel so powerless to effect change in the world, but Lent crashes in upon our powerlessness, and says, “You can do some thing, you can be what God calls you to be.”

This Lent we will ask God to help us “Open Our Eyes.” Our prayer on this first Sunday of Lent is that we might use this holy time to recognize our own temptations and weaknesses, but that we will not let them overwhelm our response to the grace of God at work in us to build the Kingdom land make a difference. May we pray for each other as we begin ts we begin this magnificent pilgrimage, that God will guide our Lenten journey from darkness to light and from death to life.