Dear Glen Mar friends,

When I go for walks around my neighborhood, I am so thrilled to see the signs of spring on its way. Random clusters of daffodils, defiant throaty morning songbirds, the modest beginnings of the early bloomers—forsythia, Bradford pear. I haven’t been to DC to see the cherry blossoms yet, but spring is inching its way into my suburban world and I’m so glad to see it. I think it’s no accident that Lent (from the Anglo Saxon word for “spring”) and Easter happen in this “shoulder season.” It is so good to be reminded that cold and snow are not forever, and the way that spring comes, subversive at first, melting ice and making patches of bright green new life in places that surprise me. It always feels like, even in cold winter seasons, time is on the side of spring.

Our journey with Jesus is a reminder too, that the dark days of our sin or grief or despair do not have the last word either. God is always birthing something new, always working planting some seed of hope, always breathing new life into dry bones, and turning our eyes, first to the cross and then to the empty tomb. The worst day is never the last day, with God, and God’s final word to us is “Yes and Amen” in Christ. Weeping may endure for a night (even a very long night) but joy comes in the morning, as it says in the Scriptures.

Hold on through this Lenten wilderness…through the cold chill of war, and the icy shadow of the cross, there is a green shoot from the stump of Jesse getting ready to push through the snow of our sin and numbness if we do not give up. Time, you see, is on the side of spring.

See you in Church,
Pastor Mandy