May 2026 e:News: From Bishop Monnot

Dear Siblings in Christ,

On Mother’s Day, I planted a garden. I don’t have very much space to plant in, and I don’t have very much time to tend a garden, so I didn’t plant very much. A few tomatoes, some basil, a few flowers.

Just a few plants, but planting that garden has made me feel hopeful.

Planting a garden is, I think, an inherently hopeful thing. I hadn’t really thought about it until I was sitting and relaxing on Mother’s Day, enjoying the view of my little garden and the little plants. I noticed that I felt different than I had felt before planting the garden—not just that I was tired (and a little sore!), but hopeful and looking forward to what this garden might become.

We are in a time when hope seems thin on the ground. As prices are rising, incomes remain static. Our politics continue to be so divisive that families are split and won’t talk to each other. Globally, the climate continues to change, and we see increasingly common adverse weather events.

Christian hope, however, is not based on optimism about the future. Christian hope is based in God’s love, and in the facts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Christian hope is a gift from God—not something that we can create for ourselves, or force into existence, but something that we can be open to receiving, just as we can be open to receiving God’s love and God’s grace.

Of course, like any gift, we can refuse to receive hope, or love, or grace, when God offers them. We can shut our hearts and make our hands into fists. We can insist on rehearsing over and over the many things that are wrong with the world that we live in. It would be like planting my garden but then refusing to water it, or refusing to pull weeds when they threaten to choke out my little plants.

Instead, we can do our best to prepare ourselves to receive the gift of hope from God. We can spend time in prayer. We can look honestly and directly at the world that we live in and its problems, and pray about them—including asking God to help us to see ways that we might make a difference. We can seek out and engage in things that bring us joy and the opportunity to reflect on the gifts that God gives us. We can try to do one thing every day to make the world a better place, whether it’s picking up a piece of litter, being kind when we don’t need to be, donating to an organization that does something we care about, overtipping waitstaff, or anything else tangible that comes to mind.

Before I planted my garden, I thought about how good fresh tomatoes taste in the summer, and how much my family likes fresh pesto. But it wasn’t until I actually did the work of planting it that hope for the harvest came to me.

When we prepare the soil within us to receive the gift of new growth, transformation happens. God’s gifts become manifest, and hope has the chance to grow.

Yours in the abundant life of Christ,
+Betsey

The Rt. Rev. Betsey Monnot, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa