It was Lent 2020 when our worlds shifted. Someone quipped that it was “the lentiest Lent I ever lented.” Two years later and our lives can still feel lenty, like an extended trip to the wilderness… Except the enslaved woman, Hagar, found and named God in the wilderness. And John baptized new believers in the wilderness. Perhaps you too have found God in unexpected places and spaces over the past two years? May you enter Lent this year with great expectations, expectations to meet God…especially in places that feel excruciating and rough. And may God show up again and again until you can’t help but shout with Mary of Magdala on Easter morning, “I have seen the Lord!”

Rev. Adriene Thorne, Senior Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn