Photos contributed by Mike Willock. (Good eye, Mike!)

With an eye out for signs of beauty and hope, these two photos were taken next to church in the past week. Thank you, Mike Willock. 

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."

 Mike Willock writes:  “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” begins Robert Frost’s 1914 poem “Mending Wall.”   In front of Second Church is such a wall. Built of massive white limestone blocks that match the sanctuary construction, it rises near the Westminster Place sidewalk to enclose the plaza in front of the sanctuary entrance. It was part of the original 1899-1900 construction. You can see it in the 1906 photo below.   But, as Frost explains, water and winter frost are not friends to a wall. When I joined the session in 2007, I took the picture below, looking west along Westminster Place. You can see that parts of the wall near Niccolls Hall were leaning toward the sidewalk and threatening collapse. Over the years, rain and snow collected on the plaza, seeped through the plaza stones and saturated and softened the foundation of the wall. Then, hard winter freezes did their work, turning water in the foundation to ice, moving and tilting the wa...

  Photo by Mike Willock

A photo snapped by Mike Willock in front of the church this weekend:  And some lines from the poem "The Last Rose of Summer" by Thomas Moore (1779-1852) 'Tis the last rose of Summer,    Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions    Are faded and gone; No flower of her kindred,    No rose-bud is nigh, To reflect back her blushes   Or give sigh for sigh!

During a recent Sunday morning Bible study on the book of Ephesians, the conversation turned to the sustenance the people drew from the church's stained glass windows. Below is an expanded version of Don Cochran's thoughtful contribution to the conversation. Don Cochran writes: When I first started worshipping at Second, I was puzzled by the military figure in the circular window in the west transept. Who was he?   Why was he put in the window?   What meaning did he have for those who contracted Tiffany to create the window?   And what meaning does he have for us today? I soon leaned that this is a memorial window to remember the life of a young man from our congregation whose life was tragically taken from him in London during the 1918 pandemic. He died not on a battlefield in France during the war but in a London hospital unsuspectedly.   As I view the figure now, I cannot help but wonder what goals he had for his life, who he would have become had...

Even the sparrow has found a home,     and the swallow a nest for herself,     where she may have her young— a place near your altar,     Lord Almighty, my King and my God.  (Psalm 84:3) Well, this is a mourning dove rather than a sparrow or a swallow. The birds were spotted and photographed by both Mike Willock and Nathan Schroeder during recent visits to church, tucked up safely by the east side of the main front doors to the sanctuary!