A half-millennium and counting (Emporia, Kans.)

As a way to honor the recent Reformation 500-year celebration, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church has started work on a labyrinthian prayer garden in a green space behind the church.

“We had a small garden there and we wanted to make a labyrinth for our prayer garden,” the Reverend Dinah Dutta said. “We are working on it now. Eventually we are going to finish the whole labyrinth and dedicate it as the Reformation 500 Prayer Garden. Our labyrinth is just started and it’s a process. We need a lot of money to get the bricks, but that is our goal. Prayer was really important to Martin Luther, and for our kids, we wanted to teach them the importance of prayer.”

Prayer, worship and the word of God — three main tenets of the Protestant Reformation — were the main focus for Dutta and the St. Mark’s congregation as they observed the milestone on Oct. 29.

“The Reformation 500 anniversary was very special for us in the Lutheran denomination, and specifically our Evangelical Lutheran Church,” Pastor Dinah Dutta said. “This 500-year, we wanted to celebrate it as a big deal because that’s who we are called to be as Lutherans. The main thing for Martin Luther is, a lot of time people think he was just against the Catholic Church and Catholic leadership. That is part of it for his time, but after 500 years, what does it mean to us today? We’re not in Germany. We’re not in the society where the Reformation took place.”

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