Dear Friends…

March can be the hardest of months. The calendar says spring is here but winter hangs on. The sun teases us with a warm day and then a cold blast of wind takes our breath away. We long for the blooms of Easter but we remain rooted in Lent. This poem by poet, pastor and scholar Howard Thurman speaks to the tension and the hope of this season.

The Growing Edge

             All around us worlds are dying and new worlds are being born;

                                  all around us life is dying and life is being born.  

                      The fruit ripens on the tree, the roots are silently at work in the         

                 darkness of the earth against a time  

            when there shall be new lives, fresh blossoms, green fruit.  

          Such is the growing edge!  

            It is the extra breath from the exhausted lung,  

               the one more thing to try when all else has failed,

                the upward reach of life when weariness closes in upon all endeavor.  

             This is the basis of hope in moments of despair, 

  the incentive to carry on when times are out of joint

  and men have lost their reason,

             the source of confidence when worlds crash and dreams whiten into ash.     

   The birth of a child — life’s most dramatic answer to death

     this is the growing edge incarnate.

     Look well to the growing edge!

Honoring our fatigue, and at times our hopelessness, let us look well to the growing edge. During these last weeks of Lent, let us look with hope to fresh blossoms and the new life of spring. Let us look to the source of our confidence, the Risen Christ.

In the name of the “basis of our hope”, Jesus Christ…Pastor Sarah