 The other morning, I tried to capture the moon and Venus with my phone. What I saw with my eyes was breathtaking: A thin crescent, glowing with borrowed light, and just beside it, the brilliance of Venus—so close they looked like they were in conversation. But when I looked at the photo…it was lackluster at best. A smudge. A blur. Nothing like the beauty I had seen on my morning walk.
So often in our lives, I think, we catch glimpses of light, glimpses of God, glimpses of hope. They move us. They bring us to moments of absolute awe. But when we try to hold on to them, to capture them in some way—whether in a picture or in words—they slip through our grasp. The photo never shows the glory. The message never speaks the whole truth. The memory never carries the full weight of the moment. Still—that doesn’t make the moment any less real. In fact, maybe this is the essence of faith. It’s not about holding on tightly enough to prove anything. It’s about trusting the glimpses. Trusting that even when the light looks dim or blurry, it’s there. Trusting that beauty and justice and God’s presence are real, even when our grasp of them feels incomplete. Faith—one that is grounded in love, inclusion, and justice—doesn’t demand we have perfect proof or flawless capture. It invites us to pay attention to the hints of the holy that appear before us everyday: A crescent moon over the trees, a neighbor who shows up when we’re weary, a message that comes across our phones right on time, a word of encouragement when shame says we’re alone. The mystics remind us that God’s light is always shining—it’s just that our vision is sometimes clouded. And Lord knows, there is plenty to cloud our vision these days. Our vision is clouded by the constant discord in our country, by a reliance on violence to solve our disputes, by grief that doesn’t stop because our politicians are behaving badly. Our vision is clouded by indifference, by exhaustion, by the endless noise of a world that keeps telling us to look anywhere but toward one another. And it is clouded by systems that keep people poor, by rhetoric that fuels division, and by the lie that some lives matter less than others. And yet—even through all of that, the light still finds a way to get through. Not in a perfect, crystal-clear snapshot. Not in a way that erases the shadows. But in glimpses: A child’s laughter in the grocery store aisle, a community showing up for a neighbor going through a really rough time, a small act of courage that pushes back against hate and offers a simple demonstration of love. To be sure, the light keeps finding ways to break through, even when our vision is blurred. The picture I took may not show what I saw that morning. But I know what I witnessed: The beauty of light finding its way through the dark. And maybe that’s enough. So this week, dear reader, when your vision feels blurred by the noise and the struggles of the world, may you dare to believe the glimpses you catch are enough to keep going—and enough to keep building a better world. Because even a glimpse carries the truth that God’s love and justice are still alive—the same love that set captives free and lifted up the lowly still rises up in us and between us today. Through shared laughter, in our solidarity, through courageous moments that happen around kitchen tables and common causes. The light of the Love from which we came is present and available to us–not to capture or to keep–but to enter into, until the line between God’s light and our own has become nothing but a blur. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa  She died in May. I found out last week. She was a parishioner from my former church, a woman I loved and prayed with, whose story is woven into mine. I always thought I would be the one who stood at her graveside, told the stories, named her love out loud, and gave her back to God.
But I wasn’t. That honor belonged to another pastor, as it should. And still, I felt the sharpness of what I could not finish. It would be easy to say this is a pastor’s problem—that clergy imagine themselves closing the circles they’ve opened, sending people home the way we once promised to. But the truth is, this ache isn’t just a pastoral one. It’s a human one. We all live with things we cannot finish. The letter we never sent. The words we left unsaid. The project we started with excitement and then abandoned halfway through the winter. The friend we always meant to call back, and then didn’t. The relationship that didn’t get closure, just silence. The prayers we whispered for people that we’ll never know how to carry across the finish line. Unfinishedness dogs us everywhere. Some of it is trivial—the half-knitted scarf, the weeds in the garden. Some of it keeps us awake at night—the apology that never left our lips, the healing that never happened, the goodbyes we never got to speak. The temptation is to believe that unfinished means failed. That if we had been better, stronger, more faithful, more disciplined, we would have tied up all the loose ends and left nothing undone. But life just isn’t like that. Life is full of loose threads. Maybe the point is not to finish everything, but to trust that unfinished doesn’t mean abandoned. What we cannot finish, God still holds. What we cannot resolve, Love still carries. What we cannot complete, grace still gathers up. So I am trying to bless the unfinished. To hold it in open hands, instead of clenched fists. To trust that circles close in ways I may never see. And to believe that even what is left undone can still be holy. Because at the end of the day, none of us finishes our stories on our own. Someone else will always pick up where we leave off. And maybe that’s the quiet mercy of being human: The work, the love, the prayers, the care—none of it begins or ends with us. So this week, friends, I encourage you to notice what you’ve left unfinished—not with shame, but with gentleness. Let it remind you that you are human, not a machine. Bless the loose ends instead of cursing them. Trust that what you cannot complete is still held in God, still part of a bigger story. And then keep living, keep loving, keep showing up, even when the ending isn’t yours to write. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa |
Pastor Melissa enjoying time on her hammock.
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen was called as the pastor of St. Paul Congregational UCC in June of 2020. Prior to her call to St. Paul, Pr. Melissa worked as a hospice chaplain in the Ames, IA area, following pastorates at rural churches in Central Iowa and Southern Illinois. Pr. Melissa is a second-career pastor with a background in agribusiness and production & supply operations. She received her M.Div. from Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO, and holds a MA Ed. in Adult Education and Training, and a BA in Organizational Communications. Archives
March 2026
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