Observing a Holy Lent – This is our Ash Wednesday service of the imposition of ashes, a time of introspection and confession in the forty days leading up to the Easter celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.  Rev. Shannon Baxter, our Pastor of Congregational Connection, delivers the homily.  In a sense, through these forty days we walk with Jesus through the forty days he spent in the wilderness after his baptism.  We also look for practices that help us turn the focus from ourselves to God.  One of those might be to sacrifice our riches, which seems in some ways to make sense.  But Rev. Baxter says that our relationship with God is not transactional.  The passage from Micah 6 is central in that the prophet says that God does not want our sacrifices of riches, but to follow God means to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”  It is a way of living, exemplified by the way Jesus lived.  And in thus living we can build our relationship with God through these forty days of Lent.