Shepherd's Heart 3/27/26
Good Shepherd Family,
There is a word I keep returning to this week.
Liminal.
It comes from the Latin limen — threshold. The space between what was and what is not yet. The doorway.
I have been living in doorways this week.
Not the dramatic kind. Not the kind that announce themselves with trumpets or tearing curtains. The doorway of Tuesday afternoon when the sermon is not finished and the pastoral care emails are stacking up and someone needs something you don't have and the calendar has no margin. The doorway of early morning when the house is still and you sit with your coffee and Mark 16 and you realize the women at the tomb were standing in a doorway too, between Friday's grief and Sunday's rupture, and they did not know which way the door was going to swing.
I am exhausted this week. Bone-deep, good-tired-exhausted. The kind that comes from carrying things that matter. The kind that doesn't mean something is wrong.
This is the week before Holy Week, which means it is the week before everything. The week of last preparations, last rehearsals, last conversations about sound systems and bulletins and whether the Easter lilies will arrive Thursday or Friday. The week of ordinary pastoral work continues. The week of trying to be present to the beauty of what is coming while also keeping the whole machinery of it from falling apart.
It is a lot to hold.
And yet.
There is something I keep noticing underneath the good-kind-of-exhaustion. Something that feels less like weariness and more like weight. Good weight. The weight of something that matters. The weight of a story you are about to carry across a threshold into another year of people who need it, who are bringing their grief and their half-faith and their hunger into a sanctuary on a Sunday morning and hoping — maybe not even letting themselves say it aloud — hoping that something will meet them there.
I keep thinking about the women in Mark 16. They bought their spices. They showed up in the dark. They had not yet heard a word about resurrection; they were still in the part of the story where death wins. And still they came. Still they carried what they had. Still they walked toward the sealed stone.
I think about the ones who will walk through your doors on Easter Sunday. The ones who haven't been in a long time. The ones who come every week and never miss. The ones who are holding something they don't have words for yet. The ones who don't believe but came anyway because grief or hope or habit drove them through a doorway they didn't know what to do with.
They are all standing on a threshold this week too. In the liminal space. In the doorway.
So are we.
So here is what I want to say to you, friend, ministry leader, faithful attender, quiet pray-er at the kitchen table:
You don't have to feel ready. The women weren't ready either. They were grieving and exhausted and still working from the old story. They brought what they had. They walked in the dark. They showed up.
That is enough. That is, somehow, exactly enough.
The stone will already be rolled away.
But we are not there yet.
We are here. In the doorway. In the liminal.
And there is something holy about staying here a moment longer, not rushing past the weight of it, not performing the joy before we've lived through the arrival of it, but just sitting with the fact that something is coming that none of our preparations can fully contain.
The week before is its own kind of sacred.
Receive it.
-Pastor Tara Beth Leach
There is a word I keep returning to this week.
Liminal.
It comes from the Latin limen — threshold. The space between what was and what is not yet. The doorway.
I have been living in doorways this week.
Not the dramatic kind. Not the kind that announce themselves with trumpets or tearing curtains. The doorway of Tuesday afternoon when the sermon is not finished and the pastoral care emails are stacking up and someone needs something you don't have and the calendar has no margin. The doorway of early morning when the house is still and you sit with your coffee and Mark 16 and you realize the women at the tomb were standing in a doorway too, between Friday's grief and Sunday's rupture, and they did not know which way the door was going to swing.
I am exhausted this week. Bone-deep, good-tired-exhausted. The kind that comes from carrying things that matter. The kind that doesn't mean something is wrong.
This is the week before Holy Week, which means it is the week before everything. The week of last preparations, last rehearsals, last conversations about sound systems and bulletins and whether the Easter lilies will arrive Thursday or Friday. The week of ordinary pastoral work continues. The week of trying to be present to the beauty of what is coming while also keeping the whole machinery of it from falling apart.
It is a lot to hold.
And yet.
There is something I keep noticing underneath the good-kind-of-exhaustion. Something that feels less like weariness and more like weight. Good weight. The weight of something that matters. The weight of a story you are about to carry across a threshold into another year of people who need it, who are bringing their grief and their half-faith and their hunger into a sanctuary on a Sunday morning and hoping — maybe not even letting themselves say it aloud — hoping that something will meet them there.
I keep thinking about the women in Mark 16. They bought their spices. They showed up in the dark. They had not yet heard a word about resurrection; they were still in the part of the story where death wins. And still they came. Still they carried what they had. Still they walked toward the sealed stone.
I think about the ones who will walk through your doors on Easter Sunday. The ones who haven't been in a long time. The ones who come every week and never miss. The ones who are holding something they don't have words for yet. The ones who don't believe but came anyway because grief or hope or habit drove them through a doorway they didn't know what to do with.
They are all standing on a threshold this week too. In the liminal space. In the doorway.
So are we.
So here is what I want to say to you, friend, ministry leader, faithful attender, quiet pray-er at the kitchen table:
You don't have to feel ready. The women weren't ready either. They were grieving and exhausted and still working from the old story. They brought what they had. They walked in the dark. They showed up.
That is enough. That is, somehow, exactly enough.
The stone will already be rolled away.
But we are not there yet.
We are here. In the doorway. In the liminal.
And there is something holy about staying here a moment longer, not rushing past the weight of it, not performing the joy before we've lived through the arrival of it, but just sitting with the fact that something is coming that none of our preparations can fully contain.
The week before is its own kind of sacred.
Receive it.
-Pastor Tara Beth Leach