When you come to worship this weekend, you will notice the paraments have been changed by our altar guild to green, which they will be for almost six months, the longest consecutive period of one color during the Church Year. Green is the color of growth, and during this second half of the Church Year, the emphasis will be on growing and maturing as followers of Jesus. The Old Testament and Gospel readings will complement each other, and the Epistle will be a continuous reading through one of the letters. For example, both this weekend’s Old Testament and Gospel reading will remind us that God desires mercy, not sacrifice. The Epistle reading will begin a series of readings from Romans.

So why do we follow set readings and observe certain seasons in the Church Year since those things are not laid out in the Scriptures and are man-made traditions? The readings are designed so that over a period of three years we hear in our worship services a good portion of various parts of the Bible. The seasons are designed so that in one half of the Church Year (Advent through Pentecost Sunday), we remember the life of Jesus from His birth through His ascension and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The second half focuses on His teaching and how we are to live out the faith as we follow Him.

So can doing the same thing over and over again truly help us to grow and mature in the faith? Repetition for a reason is important for any athlete who goes through certain stretching routines before competing. If those routines are skipped, muscles might easily be pulled. So it is for us as followers of Jesus. Repetition for a reason when it comes to worship and time in the Word and immersing ourselves in the story of Jesus is used by the Holy Spirit to help us grow and mature in the faith and become stronger Christians. As David says in Psalm 122:1, “I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”