I asked Martha Brooks, co-leader of our Women’s Ministry, to write this week’s Pastoral Notes.
Ever since our girls were born, they have spent one day a week at my parents’ house. This sacred day gave me a break from diapers and chicken nuggets and gave the girls a day with someone much kinder than I who was delighted to change the Barbie doll’s dress for the one hundredth time. Even now, when it isn’t basketball/track/school play season, Mom picks them up from school once a week, and she brings out the good snacks, and basically does anything they want for three hours until Preston picks them up and forces them to come back to our house “because that’s where WE live!”
We have always referred to this day as “Grandma Day” even though my Dad has been there most of the time as well. And while he may not have always gotten in on the princess tea parties (although “The King” was known to make an appearance every now and again) he has his own special things he does with the girls. One of those things involves heading out, beginning in early January, walking or piled into the golf cart, and looking for signs of Spring—buds, patches of green grass, the beginnings of a nest. Dad is an outdoor kind of guy, and he is of the school that thinks snow is awful, ice is worse, and 95 degrees is just about right. When the girls were little and would spot those first signs of Spring, usually crocuses and buttercups, Dad’s excitement about the hope of warmer days sure to come would spill over onto them, and they would return home declaring the time had come to get out our bathing suits because Grandpa says it’s almost Spring! Well, no, I’d explain, it’s below freezing and here’s your puffy coat and hat and hurry up and stuff your hands into these mittens. (Parenting tip: Don’t try to put gloves on little kids. They cannot do it. Can. Not. Mittens are your friends.) But yes, Spring will come. That’s a promise. You can hang your bathing-suit-hopes on it.
I don’t know if we’ve ever collectively had a time when we’ve needed something to hang our hopes on more than after 2020. In many ways, for many people, it’s been a year fraught with hopelessness. A year full of cancellations, disappointments, uncertainty, and loss at every turn. Time and again Preston and I have answered our daughters’ many questions, “We don’t know. We just don’t know.”
The thing we keep coming back to is this: we trust Scripture. We are sure of that. Let’s go to Scripture. Let’s take our disappointments and our lost hopes, and let’s see what the Lord says about them. And every time we open the Word and listen to God speaking—listen to His promises—it’s like the hope of those first crocus buds that promise Spring: “I will... I did... I am... I came... I am coming...”
And there hangs our hope.
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the kindness of God to leave us His Word. To leave us these buds of hope. And while there is so much value in sitting down every day and simply reading Scripture, there is also much value in studying Scripture in a community of believers—wrestling together, noticing things we never did before, discovering the magnificent truths that are our certain future. To that end, the Women’s Ministry is offering multiple Bible study times beginning in January, all working through selected Psalms. In addition to facilitating the study of Scripture, we want to deepen the community of believers, so we facilitate some fun, too! The groups have periodic fellowships where we pull out the good snacks and learn more pieces of each other’s stories and laugh a lot. We’ve also been known to cry together and drop everything and pray as we bear each other’s burdens. We are putting legs on the phrase “walk through life together.” Sign-ups will open this week; be sure to watch your email.
Join us. Come study Scripture with your sisters. Discover afresh where you can hang your hope.
Grace, Martha Brooks