Spring

Spring is well underway where I live. Flowers are emerging, trees are starting to have leaves, most of them still small and pale green. It’s been noted before, including by me, that the springtime is a communication from God that He can—and will—bring life out of death.

God communicates to mankind through His word, spoken and written by the people He inspired to teach us about Himself and our relationship to Him. He communicates to us through His “word made flesh” (John 1:14)—His prophetic word fulfilled in a living, breathing person, His Son.

And God communicates to us through His creation:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:19-20)

God doesn’t lie in His inspired word. (Isaiah 45:19, Titus 1:2) He doesn’t lie through His Son. (John 1:17) And He doesn’t lie in His creation. In all of these He reveals, He doesn’t obscure or distort or mislead. He very much wants to have a relationship with us. Jesus, the word-made-flesh, conveys this powerful divine desire: “Come to me.” (Matthew 11:28) One of the ways we can draw near to him and learn about Him is in the creation.

A number of times in scripture, death is referred to as “sleep”. (Examples: Daniel 12:2, 1 Corinthians 15:20) Every day, we figuratively die. And every day our waking is a figure of resurrection. If we pay attention, this is a communication of an awesome principle.

The seasons convey the same message. Every winter the creation sinks into dormancy, and every spring new life emerges from the ground. This isn’t just the way things are. It’s a communication.

Through His prophets and messengers, God promises life out of death for His faithful ones. Raising His Son from the grave, He promises to raise us, who are also His children. Through the springtime of His creation, He promises that going dormant is not the end, life will be renewed.

Spring speaks to us of life, of hope. But it isn’t all sunshine—in His creation God is honest with us. There are clouds and storms, as we know very well from our own lives. Still, the over-arching message of spring is the joy of life brought back out of death. It’s a promise.

Love, Paul