By Jodi H. Beyeler, director of communications
This week’s theme: Me & You & Covenant New
Fifteen years ago on Easter morning, I took a new life step and got married. It was a lovely weekend at a camp, surrounded by many family and friends who played frisbee, canoed, hunted Easter eggs and just enjoyed each other for a few days. There are a number of memories of that grand occasion of love and commitment that I recall with fondness, but the overflowing daffodils and forsythia that represented new life still take me back to that place every spring as they make their bright and welcome appearances after long, hard winters.
It was a truly joyous time, and I remember the feeling so strongly of being supported and loved, and of knowing God was with us in this new covenant.
Then, less than two weeks later, my grandmother died quite suddenly from a brain bleed. And eight days later, her husband and my grandfather died not so unexpectedly. So, we gathered again as an extended family on two consecutive Tuesday mornings in Iowa to grieve and to celebrate their good lives, their care for others, their love of God.
It was a sad time, but I remember the feeling so strongly of being together with my family, of knowing God’s steadfast love.
This season of Lent reminds us anew that life and death are intertwined and both are bound up with our commitments and covenants to each other and to following the way of Jesus.