Dear Church Family,

It's Holy Week. Like an accountant during tax season or a teacher during open house, this is when everything intensifies at our church. We're creating special worship services, printing more bulletins than usual, preparing additional music, and readying countless plastic eggs for Sunday's big hunt. Meanwhile, the regular challenges of church life continue — broken plumbing, coordinating user groups, and yes, even smoke coming from an outdoor electrical box (which actually happened this week, but rest assured, it's been fixed). All of this combines to create a particularly bustling season for our congregation.

I was thinking about this on my drive home. Truthfully, things feel a bit scattered as we try to wrap everything up in preparation for Sunday, and my brain is moving in a few more directions than usual.

Over the last two weeks, I have had to travel for various events. Every time that happens, I can feel the scarcity of time slowly creeping into my thoughts: how will I finish all the "regular" things with less time? Often, I find my mind and heart stuck in that place. And what I realize is that it prevents me from being genuinely present anywhere.

As I took my walk this morning, I found myself still in that headspace. My brain kept popping around from task to task, and I found myself listening to three different spiritual podcasts. Each talk was relatively short, but they each left a word on my heart.

Dear Church Family,

We have a morning routine in our house during the week. I’m responsible for the coffee portion of that routine because Kristen has to leave for work before I do. So, I wake up around 5:45 am, go downstairs, grind the coffee beans and brew the delicious liquid that will give us our first burst of energy for the day.  

This morning, however, I went downstairs only to discover we were out of coffee beans — a real emergency, to say the least!

Dear Church Family,

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. As you know, we had the sanctuary open throughout the morning where people experienced a beautiful self-directed Ash Wednesday experience. Many thanks to Emily Bredthauer for putting that all together.

In addition, we had multiple people participate in our “Drive Through” Ash Wednesday station. It was wonderful to meet people in their car and impose ashes upon their foreheads with the traditional words, “Repent, and believe the good news.” I was even able to bless three dogs who came along for the ride.

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. --Luke 2:51

Dear Church Family,

I know this is a strange text to begin my article with, but stick with me, and I’ll explain. It’s from the only story we have about Jesus’ childhood, and it’s found in Luke chapter two. Jesus was 12 years old, and he went the temple in Jerusalem with his parents. When they began the long journey home to Nazareth, he stayed behind to listen and ask questions of the rabbis. His parents thought he was with the group only to discover after three days that they had left him behind. They quickly returned to the temple to find him and bring him home.

Dear Church Family,

I just returned from walking our dog in the rain. He was soaked, and I had to towel him off in the garage before letting him inside. As he wriggled around, I wondered why drying off a dog always seems to wind them up. Nevertheless, we were both drenched, and it had to be done.

Dear Church Family,
 
On Sunday, we continue our annual sermon series, Words You Hear In Church. I love this series as it give us the chance to explore the deeper meaning behind words we often use in church. And this Sunday's word is gospel.
 

Now, I don't want to give away the sermon, but I will say that, at its core, the word gospel simply means good news. (We'll dig deeper into that on Sunday; don't miss out.) But good news can be hard to come by these days.

Dear Church Family,

On Tuesday I assumed that I would start my first article of 2025 with, “Happy New Year!” But 24 hours later, those words feel somehow out of place as I have been in touch with clergy and friends who have spent the last 24 hours being evacuated and wondering whether their homes will be there when they return. Suddenly the phrase, “Happy New Year” doesn’t seem to be the best way to start this article.

Yesterday, I helped our Trustees Chair move furniture from the Fellowship Hall walkway to make sure it didn’t get blown over in the high winds. At the same moment, my friends were quickly grabbing what they could and putting it in their cars. For the rest of the evening, like many of you, I watched the reports in disbelief as places I had visited, shared meals, and worshipped were threatened by fast-moving fires. How quickly everything can change.