UPPER LAKE, Calif. – Wednesday, March 6, is Ash Wednesday, a time when the church, the body of Christ, sets off to prepare for its Lenten journey.

The time, we know, that the cross and ultimately the resurrection, are our destination.

Unlike joyful celebrations, such as a wedding or the birth of a child, we are preparing ourselves for repentance, a time for us to identify the ways we have turned away from God.

It is a time of reconciliation. How do we come together with God? How do we come together with friends and family and strangers?

Many people fast during this journey of forty days (Sunday’s are excluded) to show that we are able, with God’s help, to take control of our lives and reject the things that can hurt or harm us.

Finally, Ash Wednesday is a time to reflect on our sinfulness and mortality and help us to realize that both have been achieved through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to remember that our time on this earth is short and should be lived to the fullest.

It’s time to pause and look at our lives – remember what we are made of, remember where we are going – and encourage us to fully immerse ourselves in the Lenten season.

Clergy all over the world will dispense ashes, usually made by burning the palm fronds distributed on last year’s Palm Sunday, by making the sign of the cross on the bowed foreheads before them.

Rev. Green will “impose” the ashes, and remind each worshiper of Genesis 3:19: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

You are invited to join the Upper Lake Community Church on March 6 at 4:30 p.m. for our Ash Wednesday service or any of our Sunday worship services at 11 a.m.

Prior to the Ash Wednesday service there will be a prayer vigil from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the church. The service will follow at 4:30 p.m.

The church is located at 604 Clover Valley Road – corner of First Street and Clover Valley Road – in the town of Upper Lake, just one block off Highway 20 and Government Street.

Darla Lewis is secretary of Upper Lake Community Church.