Years ago, as a young pastor In East Wenatchee, I did my pruning this time of year. Then, with the help of a neighbor, we’d burn the cuttings and the leaves and talk about our gardens, dreaming of growing seasons and harvests yet to come. After the fire and our conversation had burned down, I’d take the ashes from both and spread them over my garden beds.

Composting is an important spiritual discipline. Last year’s prunings fall to our feet and provide the fertile ground for next year’s growth. To work the soul’s soil, you have to look at your past growth, carefully cut it back, lay it down, burn it away, turn it under, let winter do its work.

In the church year, the composting season is called Lent. It begins with an Ash Wednesday fire. As a symbol of the cuttings from last year’s growth in your spiritual life, we place leaves from our Palm Sunday celebration onto the pile. Fire converts it to ash. Then, one more time, mixing the ashes with oil, we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross — a reminder of who we are, whence we’ve come — the dust and ash, the soil that grounds our life together. We even speak the words, “From the dust you have come. To the dust you shall return.” These words turn our attention to the soil.

The Bible and our traditions hold our everyday lives together and give them meaning. They follow the rhythms of the earth, the seasons of the year. The realm of God is not something that someone else can give you. To enter the kingdom, you must kneel in the soil and get your hands dirty. With each pruning, every burn, turning the soil over and the nutrients under, with spades in hand, you and God together grow your life.

A Season of 40 Days

Lent is a 40-day Christian season (not including Sundays) that begins on Ash Wednesday (March 5th) and ends on Easter Sunday (April 20th). Our word Lent comes from the Old English word lencten, which means lengthen. It refers to the lengthening of the daylight hours in late winter and early spring in the northern hemisphere, the time for composting.

Practices to Grow Something New

If you are ready to grow something new in your life, please join me for an intergenerational Ash Wednesday worship experience on March 5th (details in the article in this newsletter). In Sunday worship, we will study the covenant promises in the Bible that hold our lives together. God has planted these promises like seeds in the soil of our lives. When tended, these promises bear good fruit in all of our relationships with God, our neighbors, people everywhere, and creation itself.

This year, we created a devotional poster with scriptures and key words to center your daily prayers. It also includes practices that will challenge you to dig deep and mix-in generosity and justice to the soil of your soul. Growing good fruit always begins with the soil, a promise of what could be, and a few good seeds.

I hope to see you in the garden!

 Pastor Jim

The Power of a Promise – The Seed that Bears Good Fruit

This Lent (during the months of March and April), we will study the covenant promises in the Bible that hold our lives together. God has planted these promises like seeds in the soil of our lives. When tended, these promises bear good fruit in all of our relationships with God, our neighbors, people everywhere, and creation itself. Join Pastor Jim in worship to learn about making and keeping Godly promises!

March 9, 2025 – Lent 1
Daylight Savings Begins
– Set your clocks forward 1 hour
A Promise Binding God and Creation (Noah)
Genesis 9:1-3 and 7-17

March 16, 2025 – Lent 2
A Promise to the Nations
(Abraham and Sarah)
Genesis 12:1-4 and Genesis 17:1-8 and 15-16

March 23, 2025 – Lent 3
Words of Life and Freedom
(A Promise to Moses and Israel)
Exodus 19:1-4 and 8, and
Exodus 20:1-17

March 30, 2025 – Lent 4
An Eternal Covenant (David)
2 Samuel 7:8b-13 and 16

April 6, 2025 – Lent 5
A Covenant of the Heart
(Jeremiah to Jesus)
Jeremiah 31:31-34; Proverbs 4:23;
and Matthew 22:36-40

April 13, 2025 – Palm Sunday
King Jesus and the New Covenant
Matthew 21:1-11; Luke 22:15-20;
and 1 Corinthians 11:26

April 20, 2025 – Easter Sunday
The Resurrection and Promise of New Life
John 20:1-18