A Lenten Letter to the Abiding Presence Congregation
February 2026
I was standing in the narthex when I saw Lois and Rich walk through the doors, carefully carrying a brilliant rainbow—its colors glowing against the gray of snowdrifts and the sharp wind outside. It was a project that began during the 2024 Easter Vigil, that quiet and Holy Saturday evening when we gather to prepare our hearts and minds to celebrate the Resurrection of Our Savior, Jesus Christ.
A rainbow is a sign of the covenant God made with every living creature, for all future generations—a sign of the unshakable love of God’s promises. All gifts come from God and that the gift of faith is how we receive grace upon grace upon grace.
As I watched that rainbow make its way into the building, I noticed what it was made of: delicate tissue paper—the same kind of paper that holds both tears of grief and tears of joy. And I began to think about the many hands that created it: young and wrinkled, calloused and beautifully manicured, arthritic and petite. Each hand offering what it could.
I also thought about the family who decided it was time to finish it. Tired of seeing the project so close to completion, they took it home, hunkered down through snow and ice, and completed it—not out of obligation, but with joy. They offered their time and talents so the whole community could share in the results of their contribution.
That moment has stayed with me because it captures something essential about Lent—and about who we are together.
Lent does not begin with something finished. It begins with practice. With paying attention to how we live, how we love, and how we show up for one another in the world God so deeply loves. Often in small, ordinary ways. Often through the gifts we already have.
As we move through this season, I invite you to notice where God may be stirring something in you. To listen for how your time, your talents, your creativity, your compassion, or your willingness to say yes might be woven together with the gifts of others. Lent gives us space to discern how God is calling each of us to serve—and how God is calling all of us to serve together.
This is how we live into our shared life at Abiding Presence: discovering and offering our gifts so that we may serve with love and joy, drawn into God’s work of grace among us and through us.
Like that rainbow carried in from the cold, what we offer together becomes a sign of God’s promise—fragile and resilient, shaped by many hands, and radiant with hope.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Jaymie
