Each week throughout Lent, Holy Week, and now Easter season, I have made time to walk this beautiful Land that UCC East Goshen is built upon.
When I arrived, it was still winter. The trees were bare. The soil was hard. It was so cold I did not want to be out very long.
But then, as spring began to be blown in, the weather warmed. My walks outside were longer. I began to notice that plants were popping up through the soil after a long winter. I stood trying to guess what they were to become from their first leaf. To be totally honest, I was usually wrong in my guess. But I enjoyed the wakening of life.
Next came the flowers. The daffodils and hyacinths bloomed. The front of the church was gorgeous and smelled amazing. I loved being greeted by such beauty each day I walked into work.
Then, one unexpected day, the weather got cold, snow came. As I walked past the flowers heading for my car I wished them safety in the cold of the night. The next morning some of the hyacinths and daffodils were bending in the cold. Others were just fine. As the weather warmed more each day, they came back into their beauty and strength. Those flowers that bent, I collected and brought inside to bring beauty to the Sanctuary on Sunday morning.
Each time I walk the Land I experience some new sign of life:
A momma fox running in the back to find food for her babies
Carpenter bees (unfortunately) choosing the eaves of the fellowship hall to nest in
Irises suddenly appearing
Crow, blue jay, hawk and more feathered friends singing their song
The Peepers singing from the culvert by the parking lot.
So much life! So much resurrection after winter!
Mother Earth and all the natural world reminds us each Spring what resurrection looks like. While we are deep in our experience of Lent, Mother Earth is showing us signs of hope, new life, resurrection; reminding us that the work of Lent will bring us to the experience of resurrection.
When the natural world comes back to life, Mother Earth looks so different.
Resurrection transforms us. We may not notice it at first. As resurrection cracks its seed in our hearts, we may not notice. As resurrection roots itself, we still may not notice. It is when resurrection sprouts that we begin to notice the transformation.
We become curious wondering what is that seed? When resurrection begins to sprout in our lives, there is a temptation to label it as a weed and pull it. If we wait, if we linger, if we fertilize it, water it, care for it, resurrection will show us the New, the Transformed, the Hope, the Vitality, the Ministry that God has just sprouted in our midst.
This season I invite you to linger and wait with curiosity to see what it will sprout to become. I invite you to tend to the sprout, fertilize it, water it, love it. And most of all, I invite us to witness what God’s gift of resurrection will bring to our community of faith; what it will Call us to in this next manifestation of God’s Church in the world.
May we embrace this new seed of resurrection in our lives.
Pastor Jocelyn
