March 6, 2026

We spring forward this weekend. This comes with immediate pain (losing an hour of sleep on Saturday night) but with long-term benefits. We have more daylight. Spring is right around the corner! We can sense newness and renewal are in the air. However, the month of March has always been bittersweet for me. For one, my birthday happens to be in March. As a kid I always felt like the entire month should be a dedicated celebration! However, it was also a bit frustrating. While I was ready for Spring to finally be here, the month of March is full of surprises when it comes to the weather. We have warm spring-like days and then turn around and have cold snowy days. March always seems to have an identity crisis. We want to look ahead (to Spring) but we’re forced to walk in the present reality (somewhere between Winter and Spring).

The season leading up to Easter feels like that. I think maybe it’s because that’s not so unlike what Jesus experienced. The Gospel of Luke tells us that as the time for Jesus’s crucifixion was drawing near, he set his face with determination toward Jerusalem. Jesus knew that the weight and punishment for sin of all of mankind was soon going to be placed upon him. He saw the future ahead of him, but he had a couple of weeks of ministry still to do even as he walked toward the cross.

What does the season leading up to Easter feel like to you? I think each of us has some picture in mind of where we’d like to be spiritually, but we lack the unwavering determination or resolve to get there. Plus, we may not know the way. Even veteran disciples of Jesus struggle to know how to move from where we are today to a place where we are becoming people of deeper love formed to be like Jesus.

We often see our lives broken up into pieces like that of a pie. For instance, we have our physical, mental, social, relational, spiritual, and emotional pieces that make up a whole person. The Bible, however, doesn’t see our lives in segments. The Bible talks about a whole integrated person. All those pieces are less like a pie, and more like pudding (all mixed together).

Psalm 63 is a beautiful song that describes this.

You, God, are my God,    

earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you,    

my whole being longs for you,

in a dry and parched land    

where there is no water.

² I have seen you in the sanctuary    

and beheld your power and your glory.

³ Because your love is better than life,

     my lips will glorify you.

⁴ I will praise you as long as I live,    

and in your name I will lift up my hands.

⁵ I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;    

with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

⁶ On my bed I remember you;    

I think of you through the watches of the night.

⁷ Because you are my help,    

I sing in the shadow of your wings.

⁸ I cling to you;    

your right hand upholds me.

Here you see the Psalmist describing a relationship to God that involves his mind, his soul, his body, his emotions, his physical sensations, his everything! I think we struggle in our spiritual journeys because we think that there is a formula (something to be done) to get us from where we are today to the place we think God wants us to be. It may be that we have a misguided view of what the destination is. It may also be that we have segmented our person believing that one aspect of our self (the spiritual part) must move forward while the rest of us stays relatively comfortable or sedentary. But what if God is calling your whole integrated self into new realities? What if God in this season right now is calling you to be awakened to the divine indwelling?

¹⁶ Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? -1 Corinthians 3:16 

That one mind-blowing truth goes beyond experience, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, or behaviors. The Spirit of the Living God lives in you. This week, we need to take quiet, silent, alone time to meditate on that. Contemplate that reality. Perhaps the first step to formation as an apprentice to Jesus is acknowledging, reveling, and living in that truth. Letting God embrace you and love you. That is the central truth of your current reality. Everything else (your thinking, doing, believing) along the faith journey comes from that place.

With you, Nathan

Nathan Hinkle

Lead Pastor

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