Spring

This evening Michal and I took our usual walk through the neighborhood, with no deviation from our usual route encouraged.  Across our complex, pink cherry blossoms with their delicate pastel flowers and liquid scent delight our eyes and fill our pleasure-chest.  Along the way, dark pink magnolias strutting their bold flowers frolic with gentle wind and light.  Red and white tulips with their cup-like flowers line the edges of white fences, intermingled with  blue bell-shaped blooms.   Lush green trees, some shyly revealing their infant flowers while others boldly flaunting large, white fingers of velvet and perfume, decorate gardens and alleys.

I have always loved summer with an unswerving commitment, but lately spring is the color of my soul.  This winter seemed especially dreary with interminable days of rain, chilling atmosphere and flesh with a dampness that seems impossible to shake off.  Months of grey skies have stirred a longing for sunshine, and warmth, and new life.  Our tree was a melancholic tangle of barren branches, sighing along with me for the anthem of spring-the call to flower and bloom again.  And now, after six months of charcoal clouds and liquid chill, the mantle of spring has cast its green breath on plants and people alike.

Probably the greatest symbol of spring is new life.  After months of bareness, nature is bursting forth with an explosion of color and scent, filling the earth with pulse and rhythm once dormant under the deadness of winter.  The occasional bird is warbling its happy melody under the spell of vibrant buds, and cotton-candy clouds are softly treading clear blue skies.  Everything sings and dances its thanksgiving to God, the giver of spring miracles, the Seed of life bursting in every living thing.

To every child of God stopped in their spiritual ascent by the frigid winter of long trials, this is your season of new life.  After every winter spring comes without fail-and as is in the natural, so is in the spiritual.   "Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes with the morning", and our endurance will be richly rewarded with God's promise of favor. For every trial of fire God has a promise of turnaround for good, even if sometimes its fulfillment takes place once this life has played its final act.  God gathers all our tears in a bottle and perfumes heaven with the scent of our unspoken cries and vociferous prayers.  One morning, the dark will give way to the light of His presence and we will walk out of our former prison.  No demon in hell will bar our exit, and no flood of opposition will drown our lapse to freedom's shore.  So stand, my brother, knowing that your Savior is king over every seen and unseen realm, and He is descending in your pit with freedom in His wings.  Stand, my sister, trusting that His promise to give you a future and a hope has been sealed with His blood.   Soon-yes, very soon-our faith will finally be sight, and our eyes will behold The One our souls have adored and our affections  embraced.  As a hymn of the last century affectingly declares, "it will be worth it all when we see Jesus"...

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18)

"To all who mourn in Israel, He will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair.  In their righteousness, they be will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for His own glory" (Isaiah 61:3).

Easter

This weekend much of the world celebrated Easter.   Although many people did not necessarily celebrate it, most of the world was at least confronted with it by reason of it being a statutory holiday in nations with Christian roots.  In a world unspoiled by COVID19,  little hands would have eagerly hunted for the brightly-labelled chocolate eggs strewn across lawns, dropped down by helicopter (yes, this actually happened), or hidden and revealed by tightly-sealed clues by parents.  Churches all across the world would welcome men and women, the young and the old, for a time of reflection and thanksgiving for the supernatural gift of Passover.  Families would gather around the Passover meal with grateful hearts, experiencing anew the anguish of Good Friday, the victory of Resurrection Sunday, the contemplation of God's display of wrath and mercy through the means of a cross.

Easter is about a love story.  A redemption story.  It is not a clean, sterilized story that sparkles with the pastel colors we associate with Easter.  It is messy, because it involves us, and we are messy, and broken, and utterly incapable of fixing ourselves.  We are all infected with something far worse than COVID19.  It is the virus of sin, and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.  From the moment we are born, we exert a propensity toward rebellion, toward destruction.  The human heart is the wellspring of great evil and suffering, as testified by two world wars, genocides of nations, and countless injustices performed daily by "good" people upon their fellow human beings.  The human heart is anything but good, in spite of what our "enlightened" centers of learning would like us to believe.  This sin-problem is so great that it separates us from our Creator God, a God whose eyes are so pure that He cannot behold evil.  It is just that our sins be punished, and the punishment is nothing short of death-death physical and separation eternal.  God cannot close His eyes and dismiss our lies, our blasphemy, our idolatry, and roll the red carpet into His house we know as heaven.

Why would God allow His Son to be humiliated, tortured, blasphemed and ultimately given over to die the death of a criminal?  It begins with who God is.  God IS love, and love gives, and forgives, and transforms.  God loves every single one of us with a love that is independent of our stature  or life journey, and in His love He yearns to commune with us now and forever.  God's heart holds the perfect balance of justice and mercy and He can administer one without cancelling the other.  When Jesus died, He died the death that you and I deserved for those sins that we so easily dismiss: our theft, our "white" lies, our hate, our lust... He was separated from God upon that tree so that we would not be eternally separated from Him.  He endured God's wrath so we wouldn't have to.  Before He gave up His breath, He cried "It is finished."  We no longer have to build a stairway to heaven (not that we ever could).  We no longer have to torture our bodies and souls in an effort to bridge the  gulf between us and God.  All our work to reach God, all our efforts to atone for our wrongs is finished.  All that remains is faith -faith pure and unadulterated by human intervention.

God's Word says:  "If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9). It takes faith that Jesus Christ is God's final and only provision for our sins.  It takes a spoken confession to make Jesus Christ Lord of our lives.  He is not willing to share the throne of our hearts with other gods, such as materialism or new age philosophies.  It takes humility and repentance to recognize that we are deeply polluted by sin and in need of rescuing, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”  

There is no better news in all the world than the message of Easter.  That we can be forgiven, restored and have peace with God is the greatest gift.  It cost God His precious Son to give, and it costs us nothing to receive.  It will cost us everything to ignore: eternal separation from God in a place called Hell-a place of torment, darkness and unending sorrow.   Look to Calvary, and behold Love wounded and bruised for us.  Look to the empty tomb, and see Love crowned with victory and majesty.  Listen within, and you will hear Love calling, seeking, wooing. 

Daily Word

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." (1 John 18)

The world as a whole seems to be marinated in fear.  Fear of a microscopic virus, namely COVID19, to which much power of destruction has been imputed.  Fear of economic collapse as life has been forced to a standstill.  Fear of loneliness, as small and large gatherings are prohibited.  The fear of death seems heightened as this invisible enemy, this front-stage virus, attacks and infects without predictable pattern or thought-out reason.  This fear has been greatly heightened by continuous news feeds that will not allow us to forget, to rest, to ponder the greater meaning of this season.  And in this murky water of confusion, a clear call emerges.  A call to remember that God loves His children, that He holds us in the palm of His hands, that nothing happens without His knowledge or permissive will.  When we know that God loves us, our hearts can be steadied and pacified, knowing that for every evil there is a Romans 8:28 solution, even if this ultimate good is only materialized in eternity.  God still clothes the lilies and  He still feeds the sparrows.  His eyes are continually upon us, administering His good and perfect gifts, renewing His mercies every morning.