Every Spring!

As the song goes, “Everything is beautiful in its own way.”

These lemon lilies hunker down each fall, endure chilling winter freezes, and faithfully grow back every spring with bright and fragrant beauty. That amazing cycle of transformation and resiliency occurs all around us in the plant kingdom.

Although we humans are part of this natural world, the principles governing our lives work a bit differently. In one sense we keep ourselves alive through propagation. We rise again in the “magic”of DNA, but at some point, our physical endurance ceases. Our bodies give out, revert to dust, and do not return.

We may or may not have been blessed with physical beauty and health, but God “makes all things beautiful in His time.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11) He transforms ugliness, uselessness, hopelessness, and brokenness into the awesome. Jesus turned water into wine, brought life where there was death and gave flaccid muscles the ability to walk , leap, and grasp. He forgave the proud, the greedy, the sexually immoral. Furthermore he changed mockery, bullying, torture, abuse, suffering and a crucifixion into a triumphal resurrection.

God is the God of impossibilities. He can and will bring beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3). He lovingly redeems lives decimated by unremitting struggles, persistent doubts, repeated failures, and devastating unbelief and sin. If questioning God’s goodness, look at Christ on the cross. If despairing and feeling helpless and hopeless, peer into an empty tomb and consider the powerful resurrected Christ, who brings about new beginnings. We too can thrive after long cold winters of difficulties and disappointment.

God has created us with beautiful, resilient spirits. “Hope springs eternal” when Christ enters the picture. Even in death, he promises life for those who believe.