For the first 3 decades of my life, I lived in Minnesota. That’s a lot of winter. The thing about winter in Minnesota is that it lasts so darn long. And when you’ve had just about all you can take, March delivers more snow than the previous three months combined.
When you live in a place where snow can be on the ground for 5 months of the year, you tend to appreciate spring more than most.
And by, “appreciate”, I mean build it up with unrealistic expectations of perfect sunshiny days only to be reminded that spring is not summer. It’s the in between where the bitter cold of winter is gone, but the pool is still closed.
Spring is mud. Rain. Lingering Clouds.
It’s the promise of new life when you have to take the silent garden’s word for it.
The atmosphere is unstable. The seasons seem to battle it out as winter makes it last stand before surrendering. Summer always comes. I forget, on rainy spring days, there has never been a time when winter has not ended and spring gave way to summer.
Spring is the perfect picture of Good Friday.
The poor disciples. Things were looking up for them for a while. They were sure Jesus was going to free them from the Romans. Their cold winter of waiting for a messiah was coming to an end. That’s when Friday messed up their plans. The hopeful became the hopeless. Like the March snow storm when you were sure winter was over.
I’m sure Jesus’s friends would have skipped Friday if they could, but Friday is when the magic happened. What looked like death was the beginning of new life. They couldn’t see it. New life, at its very beginning, looked a whole lot like death. You can’t get to Sunday without going through Friday.
“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb” . . .”He is not here. He is risen. – from Luke 24
“A thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But I came to give life—life that is full and good.” – John 10:10
Beautifully written, Amy. Probably your best post yet. Thanks for the very important reminder.