It bears repeating, there’s a message in every spring season. For years fall had always been my favorite season. I loved the colder temperatures and the warm colors on the trees. I looked forward to hot chocolate and decorating our front porch with pumpkins and scarecrows. If I planned for it I would take our children apple picking. Oh my do our children have stories about apple picking with mom. It was an adventure! As I’ve grown older however, I’ve come to appreciate the spring more and more. I love seeing nature come back to life after a long season of barrenness. The music of the birds and blooms of the flowers just light up my heart. But there is something that spring speaks to on a deeper level. Don’t get me wrong. I love baby bunnies, tulips, daffodils and all the rest that this time of year offers. Yet, when I think of the glorious display of the creation surely God is testifying to man.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse. Rom 1:20
God is a spirit and can’t be seen physically. But His character (His wisdom and creativity) are reflected in the intracasies and order of the universe. The evidence for a Creator is so overwhelming and universal that no one can claim ignorance of God’s existence.
So what do we see spring after spring but life from death! The very principle of what Jesus said in John 12:24. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Jesus uses the imagery of a seed (the grain of wheat). It was a picture describing that his death on the cross was necessary to bring forth an abundant spiritual harvest. Namely salvation to all mankind. This lost and dying world would experience new life only through His willingness to give up His own.
His cross His death and the tomb. The needed sacrifice and suffering before the glory. In her book “A Path Through Suffering” Elisabeth Elliot writes, “The death of wintertime is the necessary prelude to the resurrection of springtime. Thousands have found solace in the deep spiritual lessons to be found so unmistakably in nature’s ceaseless cycle of life and death.
Every sprout and every bloom and it’s fragrance witnesses to the divine love of God! A love that was willing to be rejected. A love that surrendered to suffering. A love that looked ahead to what His sacrifice would accomplish! The resurrection is the public display of the victory, the triumph of the crucified one. Martin Luther wrote, “Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.”
Yes, even the creation itself speaks in volumes untold New Life. Hallelujah!
