children can grow up in a safe, stable, and nurturing environment. But this awareness should not be confined to the month of April.

Awareness allows us to emphasize the role of communities and organizations working together to support children and families. Focus is placed on strengthening families through resources and support to create a protective and nurturing environment for children.

And how do we care? I believe our church excels in caring for children in many ways. 
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​Many of you generously support these ministries by volunteering and through your generous donations. And, I believe, everyone includes our community members in their heartfelt prayers. Everyone at 1st Pres lives out the mission statement to Love First through these outreach programs. 

Children hold a special place in my heart! I am graciously blessed to serve in our church nursery. When I was a public school teacher, my school often had the highest rate of free and reduced lunches in the district. We know that children must feel safe and secure in their environment. This includes protection from violence, neglect, and abuse. 

Addressing the basic needs of children is a fundamental investment in the future of underprivileged children and the well-being of society as a whole.

As April comes to a close, please remember that every day is an opportunity for us to be mindful of children facing abuse or neglect. Every small positive step we make today brings us closer to a brighter tomorrow.

All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds we plant today!
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In His Name, Heather

Morman, joined us as our Director of Family and Youth Ministries in 1995. Lori had already been inspired by her previous positions as the former Director of the Child Care Center of the Lutheran Church in Puyallup, WA, and then the preschool director at another church once she moved to CDA. According to her husband, Steve, she had a heart for starting a preschool at First Pres, which led her to begin researching and developing such a program. With the support and encouragement from colleague and Nursery Director, Bea McDonald, and the collaboration among members of the Glory Be Board, the planning continued for several years. 

Unfortunately, due to a diagnosis of ALS, Lori had to retire in January 2000, and the disease eventually led to her death in 2001. Lori’s cherished aspiration was not forgotten, however, and the Glory Bee Preschool opened its doors in 2008, led by its first director, Susan Nelson in honor of Lori and Bea. The first staff included Susie Fischer, Bev Teerink and Melody Dobit followed by many faithful who served the children.

From that time on, flowers were sold every spring to financially support the preschool. In 2015, our Session and church family launched a campaign to build what is now Krueger Hall, and the issues of finances and space required closing the preschool. 

In January 2019, Carley Walker was hired as Director of our Children & Family Ministry. She revived the flower sales that spring to support the ministry, and it has since become a First Pres annual event!

Kierstie Renninger, our current director of Family Ministries, has continued this fundraiser for her program. All proceeds benefit special events that promote Family Culture at 1st Pres. Those activities include our Summer Worship Series, the Christmas Cruise, and other special events throughout the year.

The flowers we purchase are from a local grower, and all proceeds benefit Family Ministries. We are taking orders now for the flowers, which will be delivered to the church for pickup on Wednesday, May 7th. That means they will be available to you just in time for Mother’s Day!

The flowers are geraniums in red, pink, or orange. We also offer mixed baskets in a variety of colors that contain petunias, calibrachoa, and bacopa. These are perfect for brightening your garden all summer long! Each arrangement costs $40.00. You may place your order on Sunday at the display in Krueger Hall, or you may go online through the church's giving portal.  The Family Ministries team thanks you for your support!

In His Name, Carolyn

Palm Sunday: The Hope of a King
We begin with the triumphal entry. As we explored this past Sunday, Jesus enters Jerusalem in humility. Though the crowds expect a Davidic king to return Israel to its former glory, Jesus is something different.

With the disciples, we feel the tension of misunderstood triumph. We, too, long for quick victories and visible success. But Holy Week reminds us that God's victory often looks like surrender before it looks like glory.

Monday to Wednesday: Moments of Teaching and Tension
These quieter days of Holy Week are filled with parables, questions, and mounting opposition. Jesus teaches in the temple, overturns tables, and confronts hypocrisy. The disciples witness both authority and vulnerability in Jesus. They are confused by His predictions, unsettled by His warnings.

Walking with them, we reflect on our own misunderstandings. How often do we cling to expectations that Jesus never promised? These middle days ask us to trust Him even when the path is murky and the message is hard.

Maundy Thursday: The Table of Love and Betrayal
Around the table, Jesus offers bread and wine, body and blood. He washes their feet, even the feet of the one who will betray Him. The disciples are bewildered by His humility and disturbed by His words. “One of you will betray me.” “This is my body.” “Love one another as I have loved you.”

This is the night of intimacy and unraveling. As we linger with the disciples in the upper room, we are reminded that love is not always neat. It is sacrificial, costly, and sometimes misunderstood. Jesus invites us to this same table of grace—even when we are confused, even when we are not yet faithful.

Good Friday: The Scattering and the Silence
The garden. The trial. The cross. By Friday, the disciples are scattered—some hiding, one denying, a few watching from a distance. Their dreams have collapsed under the weight of Roman nails and a wooden cross.

We sit with them in the silence of grief. Good Friday teaches us that God is not absent in suffering. In fact, God is never nearer than in the broken body of Christ. We are called not to rush past this pain but to stay, to witness, and to trust that even here—especially here—God is at work.

Holy Saturday: The Long Wait
Nothing happens. Or so it seems.

The tomb is sealed. The disciples are locked away in fear. It’s a day of waiting, wondering, and doubt. But Holy Saturday reminds us that God is still moving, even in the silence. Redemption is unfolding in the stillness.

How often do we live in the “Saturday” spaces of life—between grief and hope, between prayer and answer? This day teaches us to wait with faith.

Easter Sunday: The Shock of Joy
And then—resurrection. Light breaks into darkness. Life bursts from death. The women run from the tomb, and the disciples hear the impossible: “He is not here; He is risen!”

Even in their joy, the disciples are slow to believe. But Jesus meets them in their doubt. He shows them His scars. He breaks bread with them again. The journey does not end with the empty tomb—it begins again with a risen Savior who calls them to go and tell.

So we, too, rise. Easter is not the end of the story but the beginning of new life. With the disciples, we step into resurrection life, carrying the good news that even death cannot stop the love of God.

As we walk through Holy Week together, I invite you to experience the full breadth and depth of this journey. The experience of this week in all its diversity and complexity is a gift from the Lord. I look forward to celebrating with you all this coming Sunday.

Pastor McLane

believers. I think about how disappointed and frustrated the crowds were as the week unfolded. Jesus did not wield or display any political, military, or supernatural power, which contributed to everything from Peter’s denial of Christ, the other disciples scattering in fear when Jesus was arrested, and the crowds calling for Jesus to be crucified. It is fascinating to think about how quickly the disciples went from declaring their faith in Jesus to running, hiding, and denying Him, and how quickly the crowd went from waving palm branches to shouts of ‘Crucify Him!’

I have some new thoughts on Palm Sunday, as well, inspired by a message I heard recently on the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree. I have never given this story much thought. It seems odd and out of character for Jesus, at least to me. I don’t recall ever noticing that it is part of Mark’s Holy Week narrative. Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph — the next day He is not gathering his troops, plotting a revolution, or discussing strategy. Instead, He leaves the city, hungry and looking for food. This is surprisingly mundane coming just after all of the palm branches. More odd is when Mark pointed out it was not fig season, but Jesus got so upset when he found no fruit on a fig tree that he cursed the fig tree and killed it.  

I have always had a vague sense that this story is supposed to be a reminder if we don’t bear fruit, we are in danger of being punished. At the same time, the story seemed weird. This week, I did a quick Google search and found that most of the online lessons on this story follow the same theme. One source lists the primary lesson of this story as “Fruitlessness leads to judgment.” Another website comments that it wasn’t even fig season: “Let this be a lesson to us. There is no excuse for being unproductive. Some might say ‘I don’t know enough…’ But that is no excuse. Or else, ‘I am unwell, I haven’t much talent, the conditions are not right, my surroundings…’ These aren’t excuses either.” According to these sources, the lesson of this story is clear — bear fruit or be punished.  

This week I came across an alternate take on this story. Many scholars date the Gospel of Mark to right around 70 AD when the temple was destroyed by Rome. I came across this question — instead of questioning Jesus’ actions, what is the author of Mark trying to say with this story? Mark is a short gospel — the author clearly left out a lot of information and chose just a few details. He also chose to wrap the fig story around another story. He begins the story of the fig tree, shifts to Jesus clearing the temple, and then goes back to the fig tree. Why? I was encouraged to ponder this. Mark was probably writing just after the temple was destroyed. Jews had been taught for centuries that the way to connect with God was by bringing the proper sacrifices to the temple in Jerusalem. What would that mean if there was no longer any temple?

I wonder if the author of Mark was looking at the ruins of the temple and thinking back on his memories of Jesus as he tried to make sense of this. Jews had been performing temple sacrifices for centuries. Maybe Jesus was suggesting this radical thought — for centuries we have performed temple sacrifices and it has never produced the fruit that it was supposed to produce — love, patience, kindness, compassion, grace, and mercy. When Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman, she remarked that Jews looked down on Samaritans because Samaritans worshipped in the wrong place. Temple worship in Jerusalem had not led the Jewish people to love the Samaritans or extend them grace and mercy — it had led them to judge and look down on the Samaritans.

What if Mark is telling us the idea of temple sacrifice was the fig tree?  It had never produced the fruit it was supposed to, so God finally cursed it and it withered away. When the disciples ask Jesus how to understand the dead fig tree, Jesus simply says “Have faith in God.” Maybe Mark is telling his audience the same thing — as they look at the temple in ruins, he reminds them of what Jesus told the Samaritan woman — that one day God’s people would worship Him, not in the correct building or with the correct procedures, but rather “in spirit and in truth.”

Over the last few years many of my Christian friends have expressed despair over the outcome of elections — some when Democrats win, others when Republicans win. I think that the desire for political power that fueled much of the palm branch waving on Palm Sunday is still with us on both sides of the aisle. If we don’t have political power, how will we have moral laws? How can we have a society that acts properly? How can we force the Samaritans to worship in the right building and stop the Romans from worshipping the wrong gods if we don’t have power? For me, one of the lessons of Palm Sunday is this — a fig tree out of season will never produce fruit, that temple sacrifice is never going to produce love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness, nor will political power. Those things will come from our own hearts as we allow God to kill the ‘fig trees' that we are looking to and learn to rely on our faith alone.

In His Name, Tom

I am fourteen years old. The sun is just starting to rise over the desert landscape, and I have already climbed over a thousand feet that day. From our small ledge, my dad and I watch the long shadows retreat. Neither of us has to say anything to know that we are experiencing something special -- a miracle -- and that we have the best seat in the house. The birth of a new day.
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​I am twenty-two now, living out of a car for the past three months with my best friend, both of us in search of adventure. Though the water was higher than we had ever seen it, we decided to get into our kayaks that night and enter the runaway freight train of a river -- like being shot from a cannon into a washing machine! When the gradient finally eased, we rounded a bend and saw the stream before us as it serpentined through the farmland below. Just as I caught my breath and looked into the sunset, I saw, framed by the magnificent spread of the Grand Tetons, a doe bending down to drink from the water -- the pristine serenity of the moment a stark contrast to my recent experience. The grandeur of what I was looking at caught me completely off guard in an instant that will forever be etched in my memory.

​Thirty-five years old, backpacking in the Wind Rivers. We’d just finished a big day and had yet more to come. I slept that night under the stars, listening to the mountain brook that was just a few yards away. For some reason, I couldn’t fall asleep, though. The night sky was too much to look at — too foreign. It was like the sky was deeper than I had ever before witnessed, and the colors more brilliant. Colors! Who knew that stars could be anything but the little white specks I saw from my home in the city? The vastness of creation that night, the sheer artistry of the cosmos, spoke to me in a profound way. I look back on that night as one of the few specific instances where I can say for certainty that my outlook on life was changed by what I saw.

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​Here in North Idaho we live in a place where it is easy to rejoice in the splendor of the natural world. For me, and many others I have found, this is one of the main reasons we live here. These experiences, these moments of awe and wonder, are not just about the beauty around us. They are encounters with the divine, glimpses of God's presence in the everyday, and for me, an important part of my faith. This natural beauty is a constant reminder that God is not distant or removed but intimately involved in creation, constantly revealing Himself through the works of His hands. That we have been made stewards over such magnificence is a true responsibility and privilege. Let us open our eyes to the wonders around us — the everyday miracles of creation — and let us rejoice in the Lord God who has made them all.

​In His Name, Logan