Letter From the Pastor:
“Wisdom begins with reverence of the Lord, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
– Proverbs 1:7
Dear Church,
It’s May! The month of Mother’s Day, Proms and Graduations, Riverfest, Memorial Day,
Pentecost. There’s a lot happening, which has me thinking about life: rites of passage that
shape us, mothers and teachers who influence us, events that impact our identities, people –
beloved and strangers—who have sacrificed so much for our well-being, freedom, and growth.
May is a month of reflection, which often leads to more questions.
Personally, I love questions. (Usually more than answers!) Questions open us up, inviting us to
look deeper or wider than perhaps we normally would. They can open portals into new
dimensions. Questions invite power sharing, as we listen to one another. They can be
provocative, disarming, even life changing. Jesus knew the transformative power of questions
and utilized their incisive edges effectively and often. Out of the 325 some questions He asked,
236 were unique. “What do you want me to do for you?” “What do you think?” “Who do you say
that I am?” “Do you love me?” “Do you want to made well?” Which is your favorite?
All this reflection has me pondering. What questions are you asking in this season of your
own life? What questions are you asking in this season of the life of Jonesville First
Presbyterian Church?
How would you categorize the season of life that we are in? What do you long to see happen?
What are you grieving, hoping for, and working towards? How will you use your gifts, talents,
and passions to envision and build the next chapter of JFPC?
Confusion, grappling, and incredulity are also forms of questions. Think of Mary, the mother of
Jesus at the Annunciation asking, “HOW can this be?” Or Thomas, refusing to believe until he
had been shown the same proof of Jesus’s resurrection as the other disciples. Or even the
father who brough his son to Jesus for healing who exclaimed, “Lord, I believe. Help my
unbelief. Each of these stayed present to their doubts and questions as they sought faith. They
kept seeking and asking until they received wisdom and epiphanies, sometimes one question at
a time. What about you? What doubts do you have? What do you need to “touch and see” so
that God can help guide you into believing even in our current season?
A favorite quote of mine comes from Austrian poet and novelist Ranier Marie Rilke, who offered
this advice to a young poet: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love
the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign
tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to
live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then
gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
May God grant us the patience, creativity, and grace to live the questions of this season of our
church and gradually to live into their answers.
In Christ’s Grace and Love,
Pastor Lynne