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).