spring forward

I Samuel 8

The leaders of the people went to Samuel. “You are getting old,” they explained, “and your sons are not wise and fair like you. We want a king, like the nations all around us.”

Samuel was unhappy about this. He prayed to God.

“It is not you they have rejected as leader,” said God. “It is me they have rejected as king.“

source: the Lion Day-to-Day Bible, March 27

Oh, but this hit hard last night around the dinner table. For me, it is a stunning revelation just before Good Friday. How many times have I cried out to God, “This is hard. This is unfair. Fix me, fix them, make spring come.” And He says, “It’s not you; it’s me. Spring is coming. Walk a bit farther.”

Friday, the sky will go dark. But spring… Spring comes on Sunday. Amen.

•

I do not like this world.  It has its moments of beauty… its promises of New Life, its whispers of Better Things to Come, but I am not in love with this world.  It is too excruciating to be welcoming, too fickle to be a friend, too broken to be home.

There is nothing ‘good’ about tomorrow. Good Friday. It remembers a day when the sky went dark, when friends betrayed friends, when a mother watched her son march through the streets a prisoner, when the weight of the world was cast on one man, and when a father watched a nation turn on his son. Friday? Friday is awful.

I am an Easter person in a Good Friday world. (-Barbara Johnson)

I am waiting for Sunday.

Sunday, I will sing and pray and give thanks.  And, I will think of you… and you… and you… all you who are tired of fighting alone.  I will walk with you!  I will carry some of your Friday, and you will carry some of mine.  And we will make it to Sunday… whenever that glorious Sunday comes… we will make it there together.

[from HOLY WAR]

This season should come as no surprise, but when winter with its heavy brown coat obscures the living earth, it’s easy to believe the land will remain in a sort of permanent dormancy. Last year, we think, the flowers bloomed. But at the sight of the season’s new-birthed radiance we gasp, as beauty floods senses and spirit as if a promise — perhaps long-forgotten or, in some cases, doubted — is fulfilled.

Alleluia. Alleluia.

We strive to understand these mysteries: That grief will turn to joy, that suffering will lead to glory, that death will lead to life. And yet we ever bear witness to this truth:

Winter is the harbinger of spring.

[from Margie’s Yet.]

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