I love holidays, don’t you? We refer to the sequence of celebrations at the end of the calendar year as “The Holidays”. You know the big three of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years? Of course there are other holidays we think of. Easter comes to mind, as well as various secular ones like the 4th of July and Labor Day or Memorial Day. But when you start listing holidays, I dare say Pentecost will not come to mind. I was discussing this with pastors Ryan and Rodney yesterday.

I grew up hearing virtually nothing about Lent. It was something our Catholic neighbors observed but it was not for us. During my college years the idea of fasting something during Lent was seen as a way for me to connect with the idea of self-denial. But still it was only a token observance of something I only understood as ritual. All of us have rituals. The sacraments come to mind, of course, but what about the habits of worship and the personal devotions we seek to observe each day? Each meal time we bow our heads in prayers of thanksgiving. That is a ritual.