Dear Beloved Community,
Just last week, our family spent a couple of nights in Western North Carolina – a little Spring Break getaway if you will. Josh and I have visited Asheville a good number of times over the years, but we realized that our kids had not. We needed to remedy that, of course!
After time hiking at Catawba Falls, playing games, and relishing our rental cabin’s hot tub, we spent Friday in Asheville, soaking up all this delightful city to our west has to offer. In a store featuring work of local artists, I spotted the artwork you see here: blooming lilies with the caption, “Spring, She’s Coming!” The price was right, and I knew just the spot for this new piece.
After such a long winter (snow and ice and snow and ice, oh my!), cultural upheaval, economic uncertainty, heavy loss and grief, I’m certain I’m not the only one who needed this good news of the coming spring. And so today, on its official beginning, I gaze at my blooming cherry tree and sneeze at the pollen now dusting my car. I pull out the outdoor throw pillows and clear out the plants I’d brought in for winter’s hibernation. I try to remember what I wear in the spring, and start planning out my vegetable garden beds. Spring, she’s here!
Another way I’ll mark these early spring days is in gathering with friends of First on Fifth around the community. Tonight, I’ll gather with many for a Legacy of Faith dinner celebrating 25 years of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Next week, a number of us will travel to Charlotte with our fellow Baptists of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina in their annual gathering. Next Saturday at 11:00am, I’ll represent us (and all are invited too!) with our sister church, First Baptist on Highland, as they welcome and install Rev. Dr. Samuel J. Doyle as their new pastor. These relationships, rich and sustaining, bear the gifts of life that spring invites. I am grateful.
Perhaps through rest or play, through time outside or time with friends, or something else entirely, I wonder – how are you too experiencing the budding gifts of spring?
Lena shared a poem on Instagram the other day that moved me, and perhaps you too. It’s called “This Spring,” and reads:
How can I love this spring
when it’s pulling me
through my life faster
than any time before it?
When five separate dooms
are promised this decade
and here I am, just trying
to watch a bumblebee cling
to its first purple flower.
I cannot save this world.
But look how it’s trying,
once again, to save me.
Spring, she’s coming!
Together in God’s work of Love,
Pastor Emily