During a home project to create space in my basement for something new, I came across some boxes of resources from my previous career that had not been opened in years. 

In a moment of personal reflection, I questioned why I had kept these resources so long. In that disruptive pondering, I realized the boxes represented an important time in my life that helped form where I am today. But was I ready to let go of those boxes and the memories they contained? My answer was “yes.” I realized that my memories were not in those boxes but already were embedded in me as part of my life journey. Letting go of those items created space for something new to emerge. 

As I think about this experience of “letting go” during this Lenten season, I’m reminded that Lent is a time of entering our own wilderness to explore who God is calling us to be. For this wilderness experience to draw us deeper and more clearly into God’s desire for our life, the exploration encourages us to let go of what has defined us in the past so we can discover something new yearning to emerge. 

Lent is about a journey forward to discover more in our life that culminates in the message of Easter with the promise: A hopeful future awaits. 

I’m reminded that Lent is a time of entering our own wilderness to explore who God is calling us to be. For this wilderness experience to draw us deeper and more clearly into God’s desire for our life, the exploration encourages us to let go of what has defined us in the past so we can discover something new yearning to emerge. 

Reflected in the Easter story is the human struggle of disciples trying to hold on to their image of Jesus, while the resurrected Christ was inviting them to let go and to receive the depth of new life that he was inviting them into. 

As the disciples stood before the Living Christ in Galilee, as told in the Gospel of Matthew, he sends them into an expanding and diverse world to make disciples of all nations. This required the disciples to expand their understanding of the Jesus they had known, while trusting in the resurrected Christ sending them to share the incredible story of a hopeful future that awaited, because Christ would be with them. 

I believe that same Spirit and assurance still are moving through us today as Community of Christ. 

I understand that the announcement of the sale of the Kirtland Temple in Ohio, USA, and the Joseph Smith Historic Site in Nauvoo, Illinois, USA, feels like we are leaving behind part of our identity and story of who we have been. Yet, as I grapple with my own sense of loss of these sites, which have been part of the story that has formed my discipleship, I’ve come to understand that the future requires a faithful action and financial resources for Community of Christ to be present for generations to come. 

Yet, as I grapple with my own sense of loss of these sites, which have been part of the story that has formed my discipleship, I’ve come to understand that the future requires a faithful action and financial resources for Community of Christ to be present for generations to come. 

Release of ownership of the Kirtland and Nauvoo properties does not end that part of our story; it provides the means for focusing and sustaining the mission we are called to as we create new stories yet to be. 

We are the community built on the witness and story of a faithful people in Kirtland and Nauvoo who trusted the call to keep moving into God’s future and to build a Temple in Independence, Missouri, USA, that calls us to be a voice of peace in the world. 

We are now the generation that faithfully is moving beyond the stewardship of these properties so the church can carry the stories of who we have been and who we are becoming for generations now and to be. 

The Easter story firmly witnesses to us that the past does not fade away; it comes alive in new ways in God’s everlasting love. 

May we trust and live into God’s hopeful future, for it is to the future that Christ’s mission calls us.