What is your first reaction when you are thrust into something new; something difficult; something painful? Are you inclined to just keep barreling forward—leave the past in the past? Do you grieve hard? Do you grieve at all? Do you cling to platitudes like “just gotta stay positive” or “everything happens for a reason”? Do you despair?
In this message, Pastor Eric invites us to face our wilderness journeys with honesty, intentionality, and with earnestness. As the great farmer-poet-prophet Wendell Berry writes: “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work. And when we no longer know which way to go that we have begun our real journey.”
Rather than barreling forward, getting lost in the grief, not grieving at all, or clinging to superficial platitudes, Pastor Eric reflects on how, in these seasons, God invites us to begin again; to begin anew. How do we do that? Well, that’s the challenge; that’s the invitation; wrestling with this is the transforming journey we are invited to travel down trusting that, just as spring buds push through the dirt even as snow remains on the cold soil, so too our pain, our grief, our hurts, our loss is not the end. Spring comes. New life is waiting. And just like literal pregnancy, our new life begins in the darkness before any signs of it are even visible.
