From Pastor Adam

Dear Lord of Life blessed community, 

It is starting to feel like spring. The daffodils outside my house have begun to bloom—those bright, stubborn signs that winter never gets the final word. Earlier this week, I found myself out on the water in a canoe, and the geese were there too, pairing off two by two, settling in, preparing nests. Even the April showers have come early this year, soaking the ground and quietly doing the hidden work of making new life possible. Everywhere you look, creation is waking up.

And we find ourselves, right now, on the cusp of the Great Three Days—moving toward Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the joy of Easter morning. It’s not accidental that these things arrive together. The church calendar and the natural world are telling the same story: something is dying, and something is rising. This season invites us to pause and ask where we are seeing that movement of life already taking shape around us.

So perhaps the question for us this April is this: where is life already beginning to grow—in the world, in our church, in our own lives? Where do we see signs of hope? Where is something small pushing up through the soil, something easy to miss if we are not paying attention? And just as important, how do we notice it—and nurture it? Because new life is often fragile at first. It needs attention, care, and intention. It asks us to lean in.

In our life together as a church, I see those signs of life all over the place. I see it in the laughter during coffee hour, in the ways you show up for one another in times of grief and celebration, and in the partnerships we are building in our community. I see it in the quiet, steady faithfulness of people who keep saying “yes” to love, even when it is hard. These are shoots of resurrection. Our calling is not to force growth, but to tend it—to water it, to make space for it, to create the kind of community where life can flourish, where people can grow taller, stronger, and bloom in ways that bring color, beauty, and joy into the world.

But spring is not only about what is growing. It is also about what must be released. The trees do not cling to last year’s leaves, and the soil does not hold onto what has already died. So there is another question for us this season: what do we need to let go of? What has been weighing us down? What has not been serving us? What fears, anxieties, or frustrations are we carrying that need to be laid down?

Because resurrection does not come without Good Friday. New life does not come without some kind of death. Not a death of despair, but a death that makes space—a clearing, a surrender. The cross is not the end of the story, but it is part of the story. And so we are invited, gently but honestly, to release what we cannot carry into resurrection with us, trusting that God can take even those things and transform them.

As we walk through Holy Week together, we will tell that story again. We will gather in the shadow of the cross. We will sit in the silence of the tomb. And then we will proclaim what we already know deep in our bones: that life wins, that love wins, that God is always, always bringing something new into being—even now.

So this April, let’s pay attention. To the daffodils. To the rain. To the quiet, unseen growth happening all around us. And let’s ask, together: where is God bringing new life among us, and how can we be part of it? After all, is that not our namesake? 

With gratitude for each of you, and hope for what is still to come,

Pastor Adam