Are you one of those people, or do you know one of those people, who collect stones? My niece, Willow, is one of those people. And I have a cousin who is one of those people. And, the cool thing is that even though my cousin struggles sometimes with remembering things, when we were visiting and she offered me some of her stone collection to use in my ministry, she was able to pick up certain rocks and tell us the story behind them. Because the super cool thing about these rocks that have been collected is that they don’t just remind you of the place you have been, although they do that, they can also remind you of the entire trip—who was with you, what you might have been feeling like that day, if it was raining, where you were heading and even what you did when you got there. It’s a lot for a small stone to carry but it manages somehow. In the summer of 2018 as we drove across Canada, Olyndra and Neelah picked up some rocks from Pebble Beach in Marathon, Ontario and they mark something far greater than just a trip and a destination—they have become a physical embodiment of a milestone in their lives. The milestone of moving and starting over somewhere new. Marathon marks the physical half-way point between Kelvington, Saskatchewan and Stayner, Ontario almost exactly. Where they left the old, and traveled to the new. So, in that spirit, I invite you to find a stone—maybe here at the church (there is a basket of them at the back of the sanctuary) or maybe on a beach nearby or maybe from your driveway or a nearby street. And I invite you to place it in the middle of your kitchen table or on your night-side table or even your coffee table. Let that stone be a symbol of the strength and solid rock that is your faith and this church family—that cares for one another, laughs over coffee and struggles over sound system failures and desires to live according to God’s will. Let that stone remind you of the God who is with you on your journeys. Pretty big expectations of a little stone hey? But that’s not all I’m expecting from your stone—I’m hoping it will be a symbol throughout this Lenten Journey we are on that will draw us deeper into the faith story and closer to God. T hroughout our lives we don’t just pick up literal stones, we pick up metaphorical ones—the rocks of worry and anxiety, the stones of sorrow and disappointments, the boulders of guilt and shame, the mountains of pain and grief—all those things that we carry around with us and that weigh us down as we begin this season of Lent. As we enter this season of Lent, I want us to join in a symbolic action of laying down the burdens we carry. That we might enabled to “let go and let God” as the saying goes. In laying down our burdens, we will be freed to rise above the flood waters of life spoken of in Psalm 32 and face the future as the psalmist declares surrounded with shouts of deliverance and steadfast love. In sending Jesus to walk among us, God reaches out to us and gives us a friend who will bear our pain and the pain of the world. As we begin our journey through Lent, I invite you to acknowledge all that weighs down you heart and mind and body and begin the process of laying them down that we will not be swept away by the weight of the cross but freed to experience the joy of resurrection. “Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me” is one saying that is just completely false. Because names thrown at us by school children in the first years of our life are the first stones that weigh us down on our journey through life—“hey string bean!”, “Flag pole”, “freckle face”, “liver lips”, “blubber” – they slam into you heart and lodge there for years—sometimes even a life-time—dictating how you see yourself and the way you act in the world. The fat girl becomes anorexic, the boy with bad teeth develops the habit of mumbling, the sensitive kid becomes a bully. For those here today who still feel the weight of these societal expectations—for those weighed down by the sense that they are not good enough— dislodging these stones and laying them down is especially hard since these are the first stones to pierce our hearts, they are in there deep and they are mountains now. And so we pray to God as we seek to lay them down today. Others today may feel more heavy upon their hearts the weight of sorrow and grief that accumulates over a life-time. Your dog dies, you loose your job, the crop gets flooded out, you have to move out of your home, your parents pass away, your partner gets cancer, your child is ill, you have a falling out with a sibling, your friend is in a car accident. And on top of all this personal sorrow and grief you are well aware that the death toll from the Corona Virus is rising, there are people killed daily in wars and uprisings and protests and terrorist attacks, famine and poverty are wide-spread in 2/3 of the world. And we all know that the list goes one. If you think of each one of them as stones—it’s pretty easy to get buried underneath the weight of it all. How hard is it to lay down our sorrow, sadness and grief—what would we be freed to do if we could? Still others might feel weighed down today by worries—worries about family travelling far and near, about what the spring will bring given all the snow and how high the water table was in the fall, financial worries, worries about their health, concern for friends going through difficult times. It is easy to feel weighed down with worry. Perhaps these worries are what you would like to lay down as you begin this Lenten journey. There is also a tendency to bear the burden of guilt and shame pretty heavily upon our hearts. Whether it is the weight of a guilty conscience because you know deep in your heart that something you did was not something God desires of you—calling other kids those horrible nick-names, holding a grudge against your brother, fudging the truth a little at work—you know what I mean. And beyond that, there is the sense of guilt we all carry just by the fact that we are aware live in a country that is “rich” in comparison to many others living in poverty and we cannot deny that we are complicit in unjust systems and societies. Can we ever hope to lay these down? You alone know the burdens of your heart as we begin our Lenten journey together. As you read the words below, written to go with the Hymn #462 in Voices United, I invite you to place those burdens upon the stone you have chosen and symbolically lay down those burdens as you lay down the stone. And as you do so, I invite you to lift your unburdened hearts to God in prayer. By the grace of God in Jesus Christ we shall be surrounded by shouts of deliverance and steadfast love. Amen. The weight of expectations that we bear, The feeling that we’re never good enough, The mountains that we make out of molehills—these we lay down. The stones of sorrow, sadness and despair The avalanche of suffocating grief That covers us and keeps us from your love—these we lay down. The worries that are burdens on our minds, Anxiety for neighbours far and wide, The helpless way we feel both day and night—these we lay down. The guilt and shame we carry in our heart, For all that we have done or haven’t done, That kept us from experiencing your love—these we lay down. Lord Jesus Christ, companion of our days, You take for us the burdens of our hearts You free us to experience the love—which you lay down.