My yard is beginning to burst with color. The daffodils are blooming as are the forsythia. My favorite, the lilacs, are just about ready to show their faces. The crocuses have already shed their last petals and returned to the earth until next spring. I think they are the first to bring the hope of spring once the winter weather shows the slightest sign of letting up. The colors of spring give up hope of warmer weather, longer days, and the freedom that summer promises. (Maybe that is more my perspective because I’m a teacher).
April can be a rainy, dreary month. April has not always brought me good news or good things. But the flowers bursting forth from the buds and bulbs do no take into consideration what kind of broken world they are blooming into. The rain doesn’t stop them, if anything it furthers their growth. The world continues to turn, the seasons change, the flowers bloom, and we go on, even when our lives seem broken and our future’s bleak.
God is always faithful. He has promised us suffering, and it is a promise he has kept. At least it is a promise he has kept in my life. But that is not the end of the promise. That promise is but one of many promises, and part of a greater story.
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)
Hope is a seed buried in the darkness of suffering that senses the light and breaks forth to announce that spring is here.
It is just a tiny taste of the greater story of the Gospel. Darkness gives way to light. Death gives way to life. It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming.
