Pastoral Letter: Before Spring Fully Comes

Dear beloved SUM family,

Spring rain is falling.

Not long ago, spring passed by us almost like a preview. The ground, frozen through the long winter, had begun to soften. The piles of snow lingering around us were finally shrinking. Then the cold returned, and we pulled our coats close again, wondering together when spring would come in its fullness. And now, after such a weekend, the rain has come.

As ice yields to the warmth of spring air, what remains of snow and frost begins to melt again beneath the rain. The earth seems to draw breath more quickly, as though its throat—cracked and parched by winter—were finally being moistened.

Standing there, I found myself remembering Scripture’s language of the early rain and the latter rain.

In the world of the Bible, these were not decorative words. They belonged to the fragile truth of life itself. The early rain softened the hardened ground, allowing seed to be sown. The latter rain nourished what had begun to grow, bringing grain to fullness before the harvest. Without the early rain, the earth did not open. Without the latter rain, what had begun could not ripen. 

So when Scripture speaks of the early rain and the latter rain, it speaks not only of weather, but of trust. It is a confession that both beginning and fruitfulness finally belong to God. Human hands may sow and tend, but they cannot open the heavens. The grace that prepares the ground and the grace that brings life to maturity both come from God. 

And perhaps our lives are not so different. 

We often call it grace only when we can name the result—when something changes, when healing becomes visible, when a prayer seems clearly answered. But God is not at work only in those moments. God is already at work when the ground first begins to loosen, when no green shoot can yet be seen, when life is still hidden beneath the surface.

Perhaps this is one of the truths Lent teaches us to remember.

Lent is not the season in which everything suddenly becomes clear. It is the season in which what has hardened in us begins, slowly, to soften. What has dried within us is gently touched again by mercy. It is the season in which we walk toward the cross, not yet seeing fully what kind of life God is preparing beyond it. We walk with ashes still upon us, with prayers not yet answered, with hearts not yet whole. And yet we walk.

That is why the grace of Lent is not the grace of quick resolution. It is the grace that teaches us to remain. To repent. To return. To abide before God while much is still unfinished. It is a grace shaped not by triumph, but by the cross—a grace that meets us before resurrection morning, while the sky is still dark and the earth still cold.

Most of life is lived there—in between.

Between promise and fulfillment.
Between thaw and blossom.
Between the first opening of the earth and the final ripening of fruit.

We do not live most of our lives at the moment of sowing, nor at the moment of harvest. We live in the long middle, where growth is hidden, where roots deepen in silence, where the heart is being formed before it is made fruitful. In Wesleyan language, this too is the sphere of grace—not only the grace that awakens, not only the grace that forgives, but the grace that continues to form us in love.

God is not absent in the slow work.
God is present within it.

That is why this rain feels, to me, like more than weather today.

Spring has not fully arrived. The wind still carries a chill. Some places have not yet thawed. And yet the rain is already falling.

Isn’t this how grace often comes?

Not only after everything has been resolved, but in the middle of what is still unresolved. Not only when we are ready, but while we are still guarded, still weary, still dry in places we do not know how to soften on our own. This is what our tradition has long called prevenient grace—the grace that comes before we are prepared, before we know how to return, before we even understand what we most need.

God comes first.

Before we reach toward God, God is already reaching toward us. Before we find the words to pray, God is already breathing life into us. Before our repentance is complete, before our faith feels steady, before our hearts know how to open, God is already at work—loosening hardened ground, moistening what has gone dry, preparing in us what we could never prepare by ourselves.

So faith is not the story of finished people. It is the story of people being made alive by grace, again and again.

And this grace is never for one life alone.

Just as the rain does not fall upon a single patch of ground, so the mercy of God is not given only to isolated hearts. It comes to a people. It comes to a community. It comes to the church. In the prayers we offer for one another, in the worship where we remain together before God, and in the quiet acts of care and kindness that often go unseen, God is giving breath again to our life together.

I believe this is true among us as well. In this Lenten season, as we pray, worship, wait, and walk together, God is at work in ways we do not always see at first. The grace that meets one heart is also shaping a people.

And perhaps this reaches even farther. For the earth is not the only thing cracked by a long winter. Hearts are cracked. Relationships are cracked. Communities are cracked. Our common life grows strained by fear, impatience, grief, and weariness. The grace of God does not restore us only as individuals. It gathers, heals, and reorients us, so that we may become a people more capable of mercy, more ready for peace, more open to the life of God’s Kin-dom in the world.

Dear friends, perhaps there is some place in your life where it still feels like winter.

A place not yet thawed.
A prayer not yet answered.
A grief not yet softened.
A relationship still waiting for healing.
A weariness so settled in you that even hope feels difficult.

If so, remember the rain.

Even before spring fully comes, grace is already falling.

Before the world turns green again, God is already opening the ground of our lives.

This week, instead of urging yourselves to do more, fix more, or force something into bloom before its time, may you gently receive the grace that is already being given. And in that grace, may our hearts, our life together, and the world God so loves be readied—little by little, breath by breath—for the life God is bringing.

Walking with you in the presence of the Spirit,

Pastor DH