March Pastor’s Pen

Dear Church,

Author and activist Parker Palmer wrote, “I will wax romantic about spring and its splendors in a moment, but first, there is a hard truth to be told: before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck. I have walked in the early spring through fields that will suck your boots off, a world so wet and woeful it makes you yearn for the return of ice. But in that muddy mess, the conditions for rebirth are being created.”

What perfect words for this season. We are transitioning from winter woes to spring hopes. We have begun the heavy, messy journey from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. And we have just recently plucked our boots out from the mud and muck of the past three years of pandemic and pastoral challenges to birth a new chapter at FBC JC.

Thanks to our Creator, none of our journey’s “muddy mess” is wasted. We know what God can do with dust. God has been at work, preparing, tending, and nourishing us. It is from this very soil that a new spring and splendor will be born. 

Friends, I am excited to see what blooms among us for the glory of God and the good of the world. One of my core beliefs is that we are better together. Each of us will make the soil of FBC JC the most fertile for the rebirth God has planned.

I’m deeply grateful to be tending the fields with you, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, even when we’re knee-deep in a muddy mess, because we know the splendors of rebirth are on the horizon.

Pastor Melissa