Easter Sunday in 2022 is April 17. I know this in part because my new Church Leaders Calendar feels like a new adventure. Here are blank pages waiting to be filled with new events and activities. Some of those spaces will be filled with wonderful events: weddings, births, anniversaries, milestone celebrations. There will also be sorrowful events: deaths, funerals, breakups, conflicts. There will be unpredicted events on local, national and international levels. There may be wars and rumors of wars. New illnesses may develop and new remedies may come. The joys and disasters of technology will keep accelerating. Celebrities will rise and fall in popularity. Teams will win and lose. Politicians will come and go. Even for just one year the events are not fully predictable. As I begin to fill in the things I do know I will fill in birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations. The church calendar will add fixed dates and the big events: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and others will be there. The best part of a new calendar (especially one that arrives three months before the New Year) is that it reminds me that I need to be planning. I need to be thinking about Easter now even though it is still many months away. There will always be changes. My old planning calendar has many cross outs and last minute changes noted. Still it was better to plan ahead even when we know that the plans will in some cases have to be changed. God can be with us in our planning and in the changes that inevitably come. But for now, let’s start filling the calendar spaces with good plans knowing that the future is bright with the promises of God.