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The Weekly Update page is extracted from a weekly e-mail sent out by
Assistant Pastor Donna Pollock
Although we may spy little snow on the ground now, winter is clinging to our state the way Mary grabbed the risen Lord and held on for dear life. The difference is that when Jesus told her to let loose, we have every reason to believe she complied. We have no similar expectation for winter’s departure, no matter how many times we beg or plead, no matter how far we are beyond the groundhog’s six week more prediction. If my ski boots hadn’t simply dissolved in the Smuggs parking lot last time out, I’d still be hurling myself down the flanks of Madonna.
What a dilemma: The calendar says spring, desire says summer, and the weather offers winter.
Now that Easter is retreating, we are still stuck with winter and the question, “What’s next?” Jesus may have risen from the dead, but the world doesn’t seem any different. Indeed, the world seems downright indifferent. Jesus may have risen, but he promised the coming of the kingdom of God. Where’s that? Where should we look?
Jesus himself warned us to be cautious, telling us that it will not arrive with signs to see. It will not be located over there or over here. “In fact, the kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17.21). As usual, Jesus is elusive, but he’s trying to let us know, whether we sense it or not, that the kingdom of God is already here, right now. And as near as our own neighborhood. Believe it!
This doesn’t mean we need to try to work up a belief in something preposterous or to a leap of faith from a precipice of doubt. What it means is that we trust Jesus. That we trust what he said, what he knew. That he came to tell us what God is doing in the world. If nothing else, he said, look at the signs he performed, his works. Where Jesus appeared, the lame walked, the blind saw, the dead lived again, and people discovered hope for life here and now.
No, spring isn’t quite here. Not yet. But there are signs. Do you see them?
Pastor Jeff