Spring is about Resurrection

It is impossible to overlook. Spring is coming.  It’s a bit ironic for me because my 2 favorite times of the year are fall, when all the leaves fall off the trees, and spring, when they get their leaves back.  I remember when we first moved to Salem.  It was the middle of winter, January 2008, and everything looked bleak.  Trees were barren, the ground cold and unproductive.  We often thought to ourselves, “Why did we move to this dead place?”

But then something amazing happened.  Spring.  Things turned warmer.  Buds started, well, budding.  And the color turned from a nondescript gray to a luscious green.  And in our amazement, we no longer felt the doldrums of the winter and the move.  Our hearts were quickened with the resurrection of spring.

It is no accident that Easter, the day that the church celebrates the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, happens in the spring.  And there is a seeming dichotomy that we need to wrestle with.  Though life is hard.  Though life is bleak.  Though all we see is the uncolored grayscale portrait tainted by the human condition, the sinful condition, spring has sprung.  We live in the light of the Resurrection.  We live in the power of the Resurrection.  And no happening in life can take that from us.  We live between the ultimate and only salvific event and the second coming.  And though we look around and see our world whittling away, this moment in time is brimming with the hope of the Gospel. Why?  Because spring has sprung.  Jesus has risen.  He is alive, amen!

So let us not keep it to ourselves.  Look around.  Find the hopeless.  Share the hope.  It is impossible to overlook, yes.  But to see it, we need to wake up, help others to wake up, and simply open our eyes to the goodness and the grace of God.

In Christ,

Dave