Pastor Amy's Thursday Thoughts

As we continue our journey through the darkness of Lent and toward the bright light of Easter morning, it is easy to recognize the ways that life gives us both darkness and light at the same time. The pain of a recent diagnosis, loss, or trauma so often walks hand-in-hand with the love and support of a community, the vestiges of winter with the earliest blooms of spring.

As we walk through this overlap of darkness and light, may you know the all-encompassing love of your Creator.

Blessings,

Pastor Amy

Blessing for When You Need to Hold On or Let Go

God, sometimes it feels like a better

person wouldn’t be like this:

tethered to so many hopes,

and fears, and expectations.

Blessed are we pulled between

wanting to let go

–sometimes needing to let go–and

also needing to hold on.

Blessed are we when we yearn

for connection and love and touch.

Blessed are we when we hunger

for the beauty of life itself and the

people to fill it.

Blessed are we when we are unable to say,

“I’m letting it go.”

Because we feel like we will be

washed away into an ocean of

nothingness.

Teach us to cling to the truths

that enliven our spirits

and loosen our grip on the painful

untruths:

like the one that says we are alone,

or unlovable.

or that desire itself is the enemy.

Teach us to hunger for what is good,

and be filled.

There will be no easy addition and subtraction.

We will lose and we will gain,

and almost none of it will make

much sense at the time.

And it will force our hands open.

In the ebb and flow of wins and

losses, comings and goings,

May we look for the divine in the

mystery of it all,

The stubbornness of flowers that still

smile at us at the grocery store, and

the need for endless small reminders

that the pain of it all, the comedy of

it all, will point us back to love.~ Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, “For When you Need to HOld on or Let Go,” in The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days (New York: Convergent, 2023), 178.

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