Biding Our Time

It’s easy to understand why many people name Spring as their favorite season. Every day new sprouts emerge from the ground, trees wear a misty light green halo, and pops of yellow, pink, and purple flowers draw the eye and cheer the heart. Earth is entering its fecund season as we marvel at baby turtles, bee swarms, and thunder showers. New life is at a crescendo.

Where was all this new life during the quiet, dreary days of late fall and winter? It’s difficult for us to feel the drumbeat of life when browns and grays dominate the landscape and the songs of birds and insects are hushed. Yet nature accepts that it must bide its time in the tomb of the earth, just as Jesus did, just as we all must do one day, before we can rise to new life.

Periods of drought, darkness, and fallowness may affect us at any time, regardless of the season of the year. Although we find these episodes trying, they teach us how to bide our time and provide reassurance that new life always emerges in God’s time and often in unexpected ways. As Peter Gzowski wrote, “We need spring. We need it desperately and, usually, we need it before God is willing to give it to us.” Yet spring always comes, and the grooves that patience carves into our souls create reservoirs of hope to nourish us when death approaches.

As trees and plants produce seeds with trust that they will result in new life, and as Jesus was confident that he would rise three days after his death, we too can trust that our life will ever continue in a new form — we who were created in God’s everlasting image. Every year, Spring reminds us of this. Let us rejoice and be glad!