May 7th, 2026

GREETING HOLY PEOPLE OF GOD,

for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:3

I have enjoyed walking around the church and hiding the tiny Jesuses and even better to see our children searching for them and wondering if they should take the ones that have been taped to the door to remind us that Jesus is the door/gate and we are the gatekeeper.

I hope we know when the shepherd arrives so we can open the gate and welcome the shepherd and the sheep. I hope we can recognize Jesus laying down protecting the sheepfold from thieves and predatory animals. I hope we learn from the healed blind man of John 9, how to welcome what Jesus is doing among us.

Tiny Jesus Shows up at Keystone Communion

Not only at church do I find the tiny Jesuses, but I also get to see him on the emergency pull of my garage door and Keystone as well as resting in the bottom of my purse. At CTK, one of our kids enjoys finding and hiding them again and another went home with a pocketful and I hope he keeps hiding them to remind ourselves that our lives are hidden with Christ and how wonderful it is to discover and recognize the risen Christ in our lives. I hope you are searching and looking for Jesus to show up.

This Sunday we will hear from 1 Peter 3:13-22 and be encouraged to “always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.” (v.15b) I don’t know if anyone is demanding to know the hope that is within us but I do hope we are ready to share our hope with gentleness and respect to any who wants to hear. And I hope we practice with each other, sharing how Christ brings us hope. Not just the hope of everlasting life with Jesus as wonderful as that is but also the hope that comes with trusting the incarnation, the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus. Jesus has gone full circle so that we can fully encircle our lives with his.

Isn’t it amazing the lengths that God goes through to invite and walk with us to show us the way so that we can live the way of God. That gives me hope. This Easter season we have been given such powerful images to discover our lives hidden with Christ. Not only is Jesus the door/gate but also the good shepherd and the way, the truth and the life- the way that leads to truth and life. Jesus reminds us to not let our hearts be troubled but to believe in God and in Jesus. He tells us that he will not leave us orphaned and will give us the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit.

God is so faithful and generous as shown to us through Jesus and all the places he shows up. Even though we may not recognize him at first, like many of the first to witness the resurrection, Jesus continues to call our name and breathe his peace into us.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving

Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

April 30th, 2026

Followers of the Risen Christ,

for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  Colossians 3:3

 I don’t know if parents continue to teach the “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” prayer but it was the prayer that I grew up with.  I prayed it with my children but altered it a bit so that when we prayed it we didn’t pray about death but waking in the morning light. 

 Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray dear Lord my soul to keep.

Keep me safe all through the night

And wake me with the morning light.  Amen

 I grew up with the following version:

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray dear Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray dear Lord, my soul to take

And this I ask for Jesus' sake,  Amen.

 I was very surprised to learn that both of these versions are a shortened edition to an old English prayer which goes like this:

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
bless the bed that I lie on.
Before I lay me down to sleep,
I give my soul to Christ to keep.

Four corners to my bed,
four angels there a spread,
two to foot, and two to head,
and two to carry me when I'm dead.

 I go by sea, I go by land,
the Lord made me by his right hand.
If any danger comes to me,
Sweet Jesus Christ, deliver me.

He's the branch, and I'm the flower,
pray God send me a happy hour.
And if I die before I wake,
I pray that Christ my soul will take.

I can see the remnants of my childhood prayer. It is a delight to discover more to this prayer.  As a child and a parent, going to bed was most of the time a struggle.  Who wants to sleep when there is play to be had, when there is life to be lived and discovered.  We love this life and get very attached to it.  God knows that about us.  And sleep is the time of rest and restoration.  It is a time we practice death and resurrection with ascending into the new day.  I think most of us long for our death to be like falling asleep, that is if you hit the pillow and you are asleep.  And we hope to rise to new life with Christ like he did in his death and resurrection.

So parents and children pray this prayer to help transition from the activities of the day into a time of rest with the important reminder that Christ is with us, he keeps and watches over us and when we slip into the unconsciousness of sleep, we get as close to death as we can.  And so we pray for Jesus to be with us, like he was with us in his life, so he will be with us in our sleep because our lives are hidden with Christ in God.

Where are you finding and celebrating resurrection this Easter season?  Is there any prayer or place you need to revisit and look at again with new eyes and ears?  Keep looking and be surprised at how and when Jesus shows up!

 Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

April 23rd, 2026

Greeting Holy People of God,

for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  Colossians 3:3

I am so grateful that you are a people who contemplate the risen Christ and think about how we die metaphorically to things in our lives, discovering our lives hidden with Christ in God. 

Yvonne Page shared that on the drive home and with some of the people Yvonne lives with, she brought up the topic of resurrection.  They agreed that the resurrection indicates or denotes the validity of Christ humanity, his death on the cross and our need for an oversized death. The promise of baptism helps us sit with the burden of death with the promise of resurrection and new life with Christ. 

Yvonne also shared what she found in Colossians 3:3. It indicates, being "hidden in Christ" means a believer’s true identity, life, and security are securely concealed with God through union with Jesus. It signifies that the old sinful life has died, resulting in spiritual protection, a secure future inheritance, and a life now defined by God. 

If you are curious about resurrection and want to explore more deeply, I would suggest studying the letters of the New Testament to see how the early followers of the risen Christ tried to wrap their lives around the risen Christ.  Colossians is one place but if you are really looking for a challenge, try 1 Corinthians 15 to whet your appetite and give you more to contemplate Christ’s resurrection and what it means that our lives are hidden in Christ as we follow the risen Lord.

We have been known to use agricultural metaphors to talk about resurrection.  We are buried with Christ and we rise to new life much like the seed goes into the ground and comes forth to new life.  These 50 days of Easter, of Resurrection Celebration, we cultivate the work we have done in Lent to give blossom to the fruit that will come in the long growing season of Pentecost.  For this week we will go back to the lesson we had on the 4th Sunday of Lent to visit the healed blind man from John 9 and surround ourselves with the disciples, the Pharisees, the first audience to hear John and us as Jesus explains himself as the gate or door giving us more to think about the abundant life Jesus desires for us.  Jesus will have us wrestle with a cast of characters; shepherd, sheep, thieves, bandits, gatekeepers, strangers and even the gate.  We follow the writer’s path of misunderstanding to be invited into a deeper level of engagement as Nicodemus and the Samaritan Woman at the well encountered.  We should also include the healed blind man, who had just been kicked out of the religious community to be welcomed by Jesus.

How do shepherd and sheep have anything to do with the healing of the blind man?  What does it mean that Jesus chooses this portrait of himself when it comes to interpreting the blind man’s new found sight.  Maybe we will see anew the risen Christ and find another dimension of our lives hidden with Christ. 

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

April 16th, 2026

Greeting Holy People of God,

for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  Colossians 3:3

Every Easter season we contemplate Jesus’ resurrection.  We hear the familiar stories of how Jesus was unrecognizable to Mary Magdelene until Jesus called her by name.  We hear how two disciples walked 7 miles with Jesus and didn’t know it was him until they broke bread together.  Then they knew it was Jesus and they were filled with great joy. 

Our lives are hidden with Christ.  So how very appropriate for the Secret Sibling Reveal to happen in the Easter season.  On Sunday, April 12 the Formation Co-op Team called together the 23 youth and adults that participated as secret siblings for 6 weeks in the season of Lent.

Each week they share a bit of themselves and their faith, secretly getting to know one another.  They shared a favorite bible passage, bible story and song.  They shared something that fit in an egg and something about what they gave up or took on for Lent.  They shared their experience with God.  All these secret sharings provided an opportunity for them to get to know one another.

After we shared a wonderful potato bar with salads and desserts, the time for revealing came.  Numbers were drawn and last gifts were shared.  Each person was allowed to guess who had their name.  Some had no clue.  Some had a couple of ideas of who it might be.  It was a joy to see the secrets revealed.  It was a time of sharing stories. We learned how stealthy siblings were as they changed their handwriting or as they were careful not to share too much fearing they would reveal their identity.  Some siblings watched the table closely to see if they could catch the person delivering their gift.

As you can see here, Joel gave his last gift to his secret sibling, Aaron. It was a box of mac and cheese.  It sounded like a box of mac n’ cheese. But upon closer inspection, hidden inside was one of Aaron’s favorite candies, Mike and Ike’s.  Isn’t that how resurrection functions in our lives.  Our lives are hidden in Christ.  We continue to look, to share, to explore together and we discover Christ is with us in the most unexpected and sometimes hidden ways!

After all was revealed, we took sometime to evaluate our experiment.  Everyone was willing to participate again and recommend it to another.  Lent was a good time to do this.  Siblings got to know each other better in a safe environment.  They could be vulnerable with one another in a non-threatening way.  They had to be creative and reflect on what they wanted to share.  They asked themselves what their favorite bible verse or story was and if it was still the same as it had been when they were younger.  It was fun!  It helped them to think of the other and not just themselves.

Not surprising, communicating and sharing the information of the weekly topics and knowing who their secret sibling was sooner could be improved upon. That also holds true when we reflect on our relationship with Christ too.  As they said on the road to Emmaus, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)

I hope you will have conversations about resurrection and about how your lives are hidden with Christ!

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

April 9th, 2026

Greeting Holy Peopleof God,

During the season of Lent we met John’s characters – Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, the healed blind man and Mary, Martha and Lazarus and thought about the risks they took and how these characters and their stories help us to believe.  They build bridges with their experiences with Jesus and the questions they ask.  Their experiences and questions help us to cross the bridge and come to Jesus at night or in the heat of the day, knowing that he will meet us there and walk with us.  Jesus helps us to see more and to unwrap the grave clothes and think again about hearing Jesus’ voice calling to us even when we are dead. 

Now in the 50 days of Easter meet the characters who help us explore Jesus’ resurrection and what that means for us today.  I’ve started with the letter to the Colossians where Paul says, for we have died and our lives are hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).  I’ve been thinking about what it means that my life is hidden with Christ.  And your life too is hidden with Christ in God.

If you read on in Colossians, setting our minds above and lives that are hidden with Christ gets further defined as living moral lives that are clothed with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.  We are to cloth ourselves in love and dwell in God’s word, doing everything in the name of Jesus, giving thanks to God.

But I keep going back to the idea of our lives being hidden with Christ. And I just want to sit with that this Easter, these 50 days as I think about Jesus’ resurrection as deeply as I think about Jesus’ sacrifice, suffering and death on the cross.  I have many more tools for thinking about Jesus’ death than I have for thinking about Jesus’ resurrection.  So I turn to God’s word and John’s Gospel does not disappoint, for it too gives us 4 distinct stories of Jesus’ resurrection through Mary Magdalene, Thomas and Peter. These encounters can give us a foot hold as we ponder what it means for us to be hidden with Christ.

Mary Magdalene’s first response is not about Jesus’ resurrection but that the stone has been rolled away.  Exploring the hiddenness with Christ may mean for us to take notice of what is happening in our own seeking and searching. And be prepared to challenge our first assumptions.  Mary’s first assumption without looking into the tomb was that someone had stolen Jesus’ body.  Why does Mary assume a missing body? Why not say the stone has been rolled away. Mary does succeed in getting Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved to the tomb in her witness that day.

As we explore this Easter season, explore your assumptions about resurrection and new life.  Think about how what we see, or what we are willing to see, influences what we believe.  Think about how this stone is rolled away and how Jesus had to have the community roll the stone away for Lazarus.

Think about the foot race between Peter and the beloved disciple that invites us into the excitement of the day and the linens discovered but no body.  This is different from Lazarus and his coming out of the tomb.  Now Mary looks in the tomb.  What does she hope to see?  What does she expect to see?  Both the angels and Jesus ask her why she is weeping and Jesus adds and whom she is looking for.  It was not sight that brought Mary to recognize Jesus but rather hearing.  When Mary heard Jesus say her name, she knew it was her teacher, Jesus.  Just like Lazarus in death also heard Jesus call his name.  What does it mean for you that Jesus calls you by name and in that calling affirms who he is, my risen Lord and Savior.

 I hope you hear Jesus calling your name as you find yourself hidden in Christ with God.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack