Letter from Amy: March 11, 2026
- Amy Rowe
- Mar 11
- 2 min read
Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. (James 5:13)
Dear friends,
We are about halfway through our Lenten journey. We’ve spoken often of “journeying by stages,” borrowing language from our Old Testament passages the past two weeks. Like our spiritual ancestors, we journey by stages through the wilderness of Lent, pausing along the way to take stock, give thanks, and pray.
This week, I want to invite you to the first of two Lenten prayer nights:
Thursday, March 12, 7pm at Holy Comforter (4217 East-West Hwy, Hyattsville)
Thursday, March 26, 7pm at Incarnation (3512 Old Dominion, Alexandria)
These prayer nights will offer a time to come into a quiet sanctuary and rest in scripture, silence, and prayer. Over these two nights, we will read the account of Jesus providing bread in the wilderness from John 6. On March 12, we will recognize our hunger and invite God to nourish us with the Bread of Life. On March 26, we will prayerfully consider how to offer our lives as broken bread to the world. And on both nights, we’ll share bread with one other in a spirit of hospitality.
Are you weary and heavy-laden? Are you burdened by the weight of the world? Are you confused and anxious? Are you grieving? Are you angry? Are you struggling to forgive, to repent, to change, or even to want to do any of those things? Are you wondering what to do next? Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray.
I hope you'll consider joining for one or both of these prayer nights. And I hope that wherever you are this week, God meets you in your hunger and nourishes you with himself.
I'll close with a poem from Malcolm Guite about Jesus’ temptation to turn stones into bread in the wilderness. That wilderness is the pattern for our practice of Lent. I am praying for all of us as we continue to journey through it by stages.
Stones into Bread
The Fountain thirsts, the Bread is hungry here,
The Light is dark, the Word without a voice.
When darkness speaks it seems so light and clear.
Now He must dare, with us, to make a choice.
In a distended belly’s cruel curve
He feels the famine of the ones who lose,
He starves for those whom we have forced to starve,
He chooses now for those who cannot choose.
He is the staff and sustenance of life,
He lives for all from one Sustaining Word,
His love still breaks and pierces like a knife
The stony ground of hearts that never shared,
God gives through Him what Satan never could;
The broken bread that is our only food.
Finally, how is your practice of the Examen going? Sunday's sermon introduced the third step of this prayer: review the day, attending to your feelings of consolation and desolation. I'm really enjoying hearing how you are incorporating the Examen into your lives this season.
With love,
Amy
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