Dear Church,  

First, thanks for all your prayers for Debbie.  She had two outpatient surgical procedures this week.  As part of our health insurance, those procedures took place in Baltimore, so it has been hospitalization while away from home in California, and away from home in Blooming Glen.  Your prayers sustained us this week, and I am very grateful.  She’s doing well, although it does look like someone punched her in the nose.  We return to Baltimore for post-operative assessment next Wednesday, so please keep Debbie in your prayers that she mends well. 

Mending well is the whole point of Lent.  We enter this season of reflection, repentance, and renewal in the aftermath of the joys of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.  The Christ Story of miracle and mystery lead us not into an easy life, but into a deeper exploration of all that is broken in our hearts and in the world as it is.  We live among wreck and ruin, as well as beauty and bounty.  Lent invites us to introspection as individuals and as a congregation to reframe our postures from what was to what’s next.  In the 2+ years I have been privileged to serve with you, I have seen you as a congregation begin the slow, hard work of pivoting from what was and maybe lost, to what could be, and might invite us to new possibilities.  Lent does this for us.  It takes from joy of Jesus’ birth, toward the pain of Jesus’ Cross, to the exaltation of Jesus’ resurrection. 

In short, it’s a journey.  And while, like the Exodus people of Israel, we know where the promised land is, getting there seems to be, as it was for the Exodus people, much more difficult that it should be.   

As we begin the second half of the Lenten season, my prayer for Blooming Glen Mennonite Church is that you take this season and continue to let go of what once was and reach toward the new thing God wants to do in your life.  That new thing will likely take tremendous courage on your part.  That’s why God and God’s messengers almost always begin their words to God’s people with the invitation, “Don’t be afraid.” 

Friends, God is changing things.  Don’t be afraid.  Or cynical.  Or anxious. God’s work can, at the outset, be plain incomprehensible.  But, over time, the Gospel becomes clearer.  In these next three weeks between now and the beginning of Holy Week, God is speaking to us about what’s next in our journey together with Jesus.  I pray for listening hearts, open minds, and ready hands. 

Blessings to you all in this season of Lent,
Pastor Jeff
jeff@bgmc.net 

PS – Coffee and conversation at the Broad Street Grind, Friday, March 8, 3:30-4:45 pm.  Daylight Savings Time begins, 2:00 am, on Sunday, March 10.  Breakfast discussions, Monday, March 11, at the A&N Diner, 7:30-8:45 am. Finally, another round of coffee and conversation, Friday, March 15, 3:30-4:45 pm, at the Broad Street Grind … Come and share in the dialogue.