Pearly dogwoods and magentic rosebuds. Snowy pears and lemony forsythia. Verdant wild onions and showy daffodils. Spring has sprung here in the Boston Mountains and life is bursting forth everywhere I look. It’s amazing!
If there’s one thing we all can agree on, it is that winter seems longer than the three months allotted to it by our calendar. It is dark, it is cold, and it seems so powerful that life runs away to hide until it is somehow summoned to resume its rightful place. I used to love winters, in large part because my birthday and Christmas came in the midst of the cold. And I enjoyed fall because the leaves turned vibrant colors and fell in showery display. The decorations were nice, too, especially the pumpkins, hay bales, and harvest imagery. But winter… aside from holidays and the beauty of fresh snowfalls… we just have to endure it.
Spring, though… spring is refreshing for the soul.
In the springtime, beauty breaks into the barrenness to remind us that all is not lost in this world. To remind us that God has not abandoned us to cold and heartbreak and foolishness. That things may be void of leaves for a season — bare branches — but they are not necessarily dead. Indeed, they are merely waiting for the command to come alive!
Much like a resurrection. The Resurrection. The lovely Mrs. Newton reminded me of how the disciples saw only winter once Jesus went to the cross. They didn’t know — despite Jesus’ warnings — that Easter Sunday was going to happen. They saw the winter, not realizing that winter would soon dissolve into spring and life would burst forth from the deadness! It is so amazingly fitting that Easter comes in the springtime, for spring, itself, is a visual and practical reminder of resurrection.
I’ve written before that I am convinced that mankind is in deep search of three “virtues,” or elements of life: goodness, truth and beauty. We want to know that there is good, that there is love, that there is a flip side to the evil we often witness around us. We want to know that there is truth, a right and wrong, a justice and righteousness that we can cling to with all our hope. And we want to know that there is beauty around us — an inspiration for the future and a strength for the present.
Springtime presents us with all three elements and, in a deep way, can satisfy our souls if we let it! We see the love and goodness of God in the beauty of a flower, the budding of a tree, and the warming of the weather. We see the justice and truth of God in the fact that darkness is getting shorter, that barrenness is being swallowed up in life, and the world is bearing fruit. We see beauty in… well, you know. The beauty! Colors. Shapes. Sizes.
In the springtime there is a strong feeling of renewal and restoration. It is a reflection of the soul’s hope that things will not always be surrounded by death and destruction — that the winter is being sent into flight. It is a hope that declares that the lost don’t always have to remain lost; that a tree missing fruit may only be awaiting the right opportunity to bear fruit.
Spring says that Christ may have been crucified on Good Friday and may lay in the grave on Holy Saturday, but life will return to the very spot it vacated on Easter morning. He will arise. And we will arise with Him.
New life. New creation. And a hope that bursts forth into this world in an amazing display of color.
Be God’s!
— John
J.C. Newton 