GETTING PAST WINTER

Is winter ending? Is spring here? We kept asking ourselves those questions in February as the weather kept teasing us with mild days and snowstorms. Late in February, a friend brought a handful of pussy willows from her yard. It wasn’t lost on me that this harbinger of spring came by the hand of someone who has endured a recent siege of “winters” in her family that included her mother’s death, father’s decline, widowed daughter’s cancer,  husband’s heart issues, and other challenges.

I thought of this passage in the Song of Solomon, which on the first level addresses the awakening of pure love between a man and a maiden:

See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.  Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. (Song of Solomon 2:11-12 NIV)

On other levels it speaks of our relationship with our Creator and Redeemer. God’s love can awaken non-believers from the winter of indifference and lead them to the fresh life of faith and joy. It doesn’t stop there, for the cycles of joy and sorrow are part of the human condition of both Christians and non-Christians. But we don’t need to stay in spiritual winters. There’s always the re-awakening of a spiritual spring through the power and hope of the risen Lord Jesus.

SHEDDING SOME LIGHT

One of the devotionals on my bookshelf is First Light by the late William Stoddard (Multnomah, 1990). He was a longtime Presbyterian pastor and, in retirement, the Protestant chaplain for two cruise lines. I appreciate this book because it’s not a quickie one-minute in-and-out devotional.  Each day’s reading includes several passages, and a four sections: What is God saying?  How does this apply to us? Pray with me. Moving on in the life of prayer.In his Day 81 devotional (which, if started on Jan. 1, would end up toward the end of March) the main scripture is Song of Solomon 2, and concludes: 

Let us be confident that Christ will bring the freshness and fragrance of spring into our lives. It may be winter all around us.  The earth may be frozen and hard.  Yet prayer can bring springtime to our souls, because it is centered on the living Christ and based on the power of His resurrection. (p. 163)

I don’t know about you, but I needed that reminder. Hurting people are all around me. But that's not the end of the story:

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12-13)

Does that say “Easter” to you?  It does to me!

Crockpot spirituality

When commitments cram a day, I’m grateful for a kitchen appliance called the “crock-pot.” It’s the modern version of the kettle that sat over low embers all day. I cut some meat into fist-size or smaller pieces, then add chopped vegetables, a cup of water and a hearty shake of various spices. Lid on, dial turned to “low,” and eight to ten hours later the house is filled with pleasant, mouth-watering aromas.

The Christian life, I think, is much like that. When the apostle Peter summarized the development of Christian virtue (2 Peter 1:3-11), he used this phrase: “add to.” Like the ingredients mingling their flavors in my crock-pot, the components of godly character enhance one another. Bible teacher George McDonald, commenting on this passage, noted that a life of discipline is a common thread in spiritual growth: “There must be discipline in prayer…Bible study…the use of time…in curbing bodily appetites…in sacrificial living.” The end of all this is “that Christ will have the best of our lives.”

Peter’s “recipe” for godly living begins, of course, with the foundation of faith—for without faith in the living God, trying to achieve these graces on our own is destined for defeat. After faith come these (synonyms in parenthesis from the Amplified Bible):

*Virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy)—the desire to live wholly before a holy God.

*Knowledge (intelligence)—not satisfied with knowing the bare basics of the faith, but earnestly, like a dog gnawing on a bone, desiring to know more and more about God through His Word.

*Temperance (self-control)—willing to give up things we realize enslave us. (Think: what possession or activity absorbs your time and energy, even though it might be interfering with your growth in Christ?)

*Patience (steadfastness, endurance)—having a long fuse when provoked, giving up “rights” when the purposes of God are better served by deference.

*Godliness (piety)—known for conduct that truly reflects God.

*Brotherly kindness (affection)—truly caring about people in the full spectrum of their needs: physical, emotional, spiritual.

*Charity (Christian love)—Not the “valentine” type love, but the deep, God-sourced love that causes us to invest our time, treasures, and lives for others. It’s what the old apostle John characterized: “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for ours sins” (1 John 4:10).

Peter adds that failure to develop these seven graces will result in barrenness, unfruitfulness, shortsightedness, blindness, and forgetfulness. To bring it back to the crock-pot analogy, it’s like never plugging the pot in. After time, the meat and veggies will rot and cause quite a stench.

I’d rather be a vessel holding good things. Appropriately, all those ingredients require heat (fiery times—see 1 Peter 4:12-13) to become a finished product. We’re to be crock-pots, not refrigerators!