Here is your worship bulletin, weekly newsletter and calendar for the week of May 10, 2026.
Join us for Sunday Worship at 9:30 am on May 10, 2026, the 6th Sunday of Easter. Rev. David J. Wood, Interim Senior Minister, will lead the service.
A Note from David J. Wood
Dear Friends,
As I write, it is a beautiful day here on the Mid-Coast! I intend to do some serious mowing and wood splitting this weekend!
Also, re. this weekend—Sunday is Mother’s Day…and I have decided to wade in with a Mother’s Day sermon. I will begin from the solid assumption that we all have, biologically speaking, a mother (either living or dead) and that all of us have been mothered (relationally speaking) by any number of persons (female and male) throughout our lives. That should give me a lot to work with. I will speak critically of how, in my view, Mother’s Day has become over-sentimentalized in the culture and (more often than not) in the way it has been celebrated by congregations.
I have a favorite picture/memory of my mother—Betty Wood. It was taken back in 2002, less than two years before she died at age 75 after an eight year struggle with breast cancer. It was taken on a final trip I took with my mother and my four siblings to her childhood home in Mildura, located in the far north-western corner in the State of Victoria, Australia. It was the first time any of us had been to her childhood home—a farm set in the barren land of the outback. Her step brother now ran the farm.
It was place of deeply felt memories—both warm and tragic. Her mother died suddenly there in their home from an infection that these days would easily have been treated. My mother was only 10 years old. She remembers with great affection how close she became to her father, of how she came to be his right-hand in running and managing the farm. Her admiration for him was unparalleled.
However, when he remarried after a few years, his new wife did not take kindly to the place my mother and her younger sister held in her husband’s heart. My mother was sent away to live with her Aunt in Melbourne. It was the saddest of all days for her. But, as I shared briefly in my sermon a few weeks ago, it was her Aunt who taught her about Jesus and she talks of how that experience transformed her sadness and her life forever. She remains for me the most positive, loving, graceful person I have ever known.
I love this picture. I snapped it as she stood in the middle of the flourishing garden that was now situated in the backyard of her childhood home. In the background is her great niece holding her newborn. The garden was made all the more beautiful because it was surrounded by the arid, dusty, wind-blown, red dirt landscape of that part of the Australian outback. It was for me a wonderful image of how my mother’s life and faith flourished amid such difficult and tragic life circumstances. Whatever flourishing I have known in my own life is part of the garden she tended to throughout her life.
I hope this Mother’s Day is an occasion for you to recall the goodness of a mother in your life—biological or otherwise. I consider myself blessed to have had both in the same person.
To all, I wish for a blessed Mother’s Day. As part of your celebration this weekend, join us Sunday for Worship if you are able.
Peace,
David