Mike Willock writes: Every now and then a passage of Scripture springs opens in a new way – revealing something that was always there but was somehow hidden from view. That happened to me as I read the March 18 devotion from Luther Seminary, which was the text that Travis preached on this Sunday. The passage was Luke 13:6-9 – the story of the man, the gardener, and the fig tree. Then Jesus told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' The gardener replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'" The startling insight for me was that the man blamed the tree when it failed to bear the desired fru...

Ellie Stock has a piece that has just appeared in the Presbytery of Giddings Lovejoy e-newsletter and blog. She compares two deaths - that of Julius Caesar "dying as he tried on hold to power as Dictator for Life of the Roman Empire ... his death leading to continuing intrigue, chaos, and power grabs" and that of "Jesus, dying also betrayed and abandoned by his closest followers" but with a totally different undersatanding of power. Ellie asks the provocative question, "Is Earth moving towards an Ides of March—a death caused by the ambition, competition, hunger-for-power?" and what does the Jesus Way have to say about this? You can read the whole piece here.

As winter is slowly edged out by spring, here are two timely photos taken by Mike Willock in the church grounds recently, along his amusing captions. Thanks for the contribution, Mike. "Even the downspouts are saying what they think about winter" "I’m trying to get ready for spring."

Tim Woodcock writes: To return to the theme of the previous blog post about “ Poems of hope and resilience ,” I was struck by the power of Francisco X. Alarcon’s “ L.A. Story .” The context that gives rise to that poem is the Rodney King protests, referred not by name but simply by the date – April 1992 - that is attached to the poem. But the poem reads almost as well in the context of Ukraine or any other situation of high volatility. The poem is not a complex one. It paints a bleak, dystopian landscape, followed by this beautiful image: o god show us the way lead us   spare us  from ever turning into walking    matches amidst so much gasoline