Note: This edition of “Thoughts from the Pastor” includes a submission by our pastoral assistant Zoe Hickerson. Enjoy!

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Each new year in late January or so, I start going out in the yard every day in my tall garden boots to look for resurrection. The cedars and camellias and pines remain stately, and I’m grateful for their evergreen grace all winter, but they aren’t what draws me outside. It’s the bare trees and the bare patches of dirt I’m here for. A month before and almost everything looked gray and dismal, like it would be always winter but never Christmas. Or Spring.

But by late January or early February, I become emboldened like Joseph of Arimathea, who the Gospel of Mark tells us was looking for the kingdom of God. I inspect the blueberry bushes for new leaves. I spy the growing spires of bulbs, marching up from the earth. I wiggle my fingers around in leaf litter and find the rounded fiddleheads of ferns preparing to unfurl. I am reminded of the beginning of Isaiah 43:19, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Spring comes yearly, but it always astounds me, and I don’t want to miss a minute of the Lord’s Resurrection Symphony conducted by time and temperature. Don’t want to miss the mystery of what He raises from the earth.

This past Sunday, Vineyard Community Church joined with the Church worldwide, across continents and languages and climates, to celebrate the culmination of the annual but astounding news that God’s son came down, got wrapped in skin, and was born. He taught and healed and offended the religious establishment and died at their hands. And like ordinary garden plants that hear the call of the Maker every Spring, He rose from the earth, conquering death for the rest of the human race.

Let us not lose our wonder at this fact. May we run like Mary Magdalene to proclaim the Good News. May our hearts burn like the disciples on the road to Emmaus. May we cry like Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” In June, VCC will have a short series inspired by Pentecost, where we grapple with the wonder and practicalities of living as Jesus’ church in a world where His kingdom has broken in, but where we still grapple with the effects of sin and death and problems. Join us!