SEASON'S GREETINGS!

Christmas, of course, is when the phrase “Season's Greetings” penetrates our culture. I know what people are trying to say, like: “The weather outside is awful, but all those gifts under the tree make things awesome.” So what sort of greetings are appropriate for spring? Please, not “the Easter bunny's comin' tonight.” For me, spring's first smiles are the warm days and earth awakening. The first crocus. Puttin' away the snow boots. Pruning the roses. Looking upward, to the blue sky, and thinking, Oh, God, all this You created. I cannot imagine Your smile as Your plan of beauty emerged.

To borrow from King Solomon and his famous “love ode”:

See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone,

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come. (Song of Solomon 2:11)

Yes, I know, he wasn't giving a weather report for the six o'clock news. Instead, his hormones were bubbling for a certain young lady whose love he craved. But maybe there's a lesson here beneath his poetry.

This winter, two friends lost their husbands. I've been down that lonely road, and while I can offer hugs and words of care, it's a journey we must take in our own way, leaning heavily into Jesus. “Lover of My Soul.”

If that last phrase stirred up some old memories of a hymn, you're right. It goes back to about 1740 when Charles Wesley penned those words shortly after accepting Jesus as His Lord and Savior. Its verses tell of seeking courage and comfort in Jesus when trials come. When the winter of hard times fades. When we can begin to see what God can do with our sorrows and disappointments. Stop for a minute and reflect or sing along about “Jesus, Lover of My Soul”: Bing Videos

The crocus blossom that faithfully pops up every spring by my front sidewalk reminds me of that. When we put away our snow boots and Christmas carols, we didn't put away all our reasons to sing and praise God. This is Easter month! Even as we can rejoice in flowers re-emerging, we can be astounded again by the beauty of this truth: He is risen, just as He said. And just as the angel triumphantly announced to the women who came to anoint a decaying body, and were shocked by the most amazing news ever.

Surely, “the season of singing has come” and we don't need to wait for “Easter Sunday” to proclaim that: Christ the Lord has risen today...Alleluia

Join these singers on You Tube: Bing Videos

Fifty shades of yellow

 

Unseasonably warm days have brought early spring to my area.  I haven’t shoveled snow in weeks, and crocus blossoms have popped at a sunny spot in my son’s yard. Those happy little blooms always remind me of this portion of Song of Solomon:
See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come. (Song of Solomon 2:11)
Especially for those who live in climates where gray winter days drag on, it’s a happy day when flowers appear again.
 

Okay, I know that “Song of Solomon” can be read at several levels, one being a sensual poem between a man and his betrothed. But rather than the reported raunchy stuff of a current “gray”-named  film (which I have not seen nor plan to see), this is the pure marital love of God’s original plan for men and women,  all the way back to Adam and Eve. On another level, this verse reminds us that temptations and hardships (“the winter”) aren’t forever. As 1 Corinthians 10:13 points out:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
God knows how much “winter” we can endure spiritually. Renewal and hope—like fifty shades of early spring flowers--can come as we walk in trust and obedience to God.

Our early spring has reminded me of another recent film, about winter, which has spawned more than its share of child-focused merchandise. This cartoon took liberties with a fairy tale about a young queen cursed with turning everything she touched into frozen deadness.  She decides to abandon her kingdom and go as far away as possible to the ultimate frozen land.  With her long white tresses, oversized eyes, and Barbie-doll figure, she seems to have everything “right.” But she reminds me of spoiled little kids who stomp off to their rooms when life doesn’t go their way, slamming the door behind them.  The real heroine of the film was her boy-crazy sister, who broke the “ice curse” with an act of sacrificial love. Yet the “ice queen” and her sister were both flawed beings and not true to real life. Real life is this:

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.(Romans 5:8)
Our “sin” state left us stuck in a spiritual winter. But Jesus’ sacrificial death for our sins made it possible for us to have new spiritual life. 

Let those crocuses push through the mat of dead leaves!  In all their buttery glory, they’re the advance scouts for spring’s most magnificent event: Easter.

Junk call reflections

Photo taken late fall at our local riverfront park.
The sight reminded me that God has purposes 
worth reflecting on, even in life's "winter" times.
 

The phone rang and I almost tripped and broke my big toe/neck/something-else-vital in my hurry to answer it. In an urgent, buy-it-now voice, the robotic caller asked if I knew how many people fall and can’t get up? Thus, the recording said, I urgently needed to be connected with a standing-by operator to order the magic button that will summon an ambulance, Boy Scouts, National Guard, and Secret Service to my limp body.
 
I chose their “do not call me again” option, although I’m sure they will try again. Since my age has bumped me into solicitors’ list for “health gadgets”—despite signing up for the national “do not call” lists—I’m sure I’ll hear from the panic-button people again. But whenever those calls do come, I find myself reflecting a moment on who I am and where I am going.  This late-fall (pun intended) reflection photo of branches in an inlet of our local waterfront park speaks of my reflective mood right now. Perhaps that’s because I recently attended the memorial service for a faithful 84-year-old Christian who lived a block away.

Funerals prompt reminders of our own mortality. So do death-flirting incidents like bad accidents. One night in 1997, as our family headed home from a vacation, a drinking driver imagined that he was making a turn on the Indy 500 track. Unfortunately, our car was in his way as he veered across the center line. SMASH! Our car turned into junk and we spent a night in an emergency room hours away from home. Ditto this past Thanksgiving, when a teen driver learned the hard way that speed and corners are incompatible, and his fish-tailing car smashed into us, even though, seeing him coming, we’d pulled off the road.

 As my husband and I watched our destroyed vehicle cranked onto a tow truck (we escaped without visible injury), we expressed similar thoughts about how God knows the day and hour that our task on earth is done. For believers, the next destination is Heaven. E.M. Bounds said it so well in his book, Heaven: A Place, A City, a Home (Revell, 1921, p. 125):

Heaven ought to draw and engage us.  Heaven ought to so fill our hearts and hands, our manner and conversation, our character and our features, that all would see that we are foreigners, strangers to this world, natives of a nobler clime, fairer than this. Out of tune, out of harmony, out of course, we must be of this world. The very atmosphere of this world should be chilling to us and noxious, its suns eclipsed and its companionship dull and insipid.  Heaven is our native land and home to us, and death to us is not the dying hour, but the birth hour.

God will never call us with a nuisance sales pitch. Yet His call to our hearts is firm and true. Daily, He whispers that Heaven-focused question, “What will you do today on earth in response to My Son’s costly death for your salvation? How will you show this world that Jesus matters to you?”

At such times we need more than “reflection.” We may fall, but God is ready to help us up. And then, we need to get to work and stir the waters in the time left!