Resurrection Spring

"Nature, in Dakota, can indeed be an experience of the holy."

Kathleen Norris, Dakota

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One Sunday, the world turned Easter. 

Three days prior, I had been pouring out aching soul to my honorary sister, that Lent has been a season of mourning this year, even mourning that I can't seem to be disciplined in the things I had wanted in this season. I am frustrated. I am bitter. I am mean. I am withdrawn. I am confronted, full-force, with the ugly, deep-reaching roots of these things in me. The one I long to see made new, the one I feel compelled to pray for, the slow-growing human testament to the faithfulness of Israel's I AM, has been frozen ground. Hard to sustain hope, I fall into the temptation of, "You won't really live. This is as good as things will get." Dark is the world, abounding in news reports of murderous radicals, women used brutally as objects of sick pleasure, objects to be dominated. People are gunned down in their homes, on their porches. Why have you forsaken us?

Ice-filled air, can't-get-off-the-couch seasonal depression, bone-aching-cold, frozen white light, sunless days--even the ancient pine standing guard of our house groaned with the hardness of winter. We held our breath, cautiously hopeful, when the forecast predicted 30 degrees above zero. Positive 30 is a sad paradise. Single-digits and teen-temperatures dominated for long streaks. There is something evil, insisted my pastor, in that kind of bitter-cold.

Redemptive intentions at work were not redemptive. Weary, powerless, I cried through a management meeting, an ice-laden branch, too long wind-beaten, grown thin, snapped.

"I guess", I typed to my soul-friend, "I guess Lent, these seasons of struggle, point us to the cross. It's not nice. It's not tidy. To suffer with Jesus, to feel a tiny bit of the weight of despair, of sin, of utter ugliness, loneliness, confusion, and even fear is painful. Easter is coming. The resurrection is right around the corner. There is life breaking through death. Do I trust that? In my deepest being, do I trust that the one who makes promises will keep them? That God wants to bring life to dry bones?"

I didn't know. I didn't think the hard-packed winter was going to break. The next day, our community group wrestled with the problem of pain.

Three days later, life exploded out of ice-packed earth. 

Without warning, without a single word that she was on her way, Spring arrived. I'm still stunned. I can't wrap my mind around the suddenness of transformation. Isn't there traditionally a gradual thaw, a slow increase of temperature, a shift in the air-scent? Not this year. This year, Spring came like the Resurrection: predicted, assured, but somehow still a joyous surprise, one you can touch and see and smell and even still cannot seem to grasp the total realness. She speaks the story she's been given: This is how the Creator works. He breaks through, Jesus himself Life and Resurrection, on his time-table, shockingly. He stuns, he surprises. He is on the time-table of no human, no government, no renegade power-force. Declaring his coming, he comes without warning.

The earth is yet winter-scarred. Dirty debris, unearthed, marches down streets and sidewalks. like the undead, riding melted snow that runs black, swept into gutters. An older, flannel-wearing man arrests these garbage zombies, jailing them in white plastic, secured for permanent disposal. Rebel ice, though quickly losing ground, holds captive territory still to be cut through by yellow sun, soft and powerful. With the porch broom, I clear dusty pine needles and twigs, barefoot. Not seven days ago, this broom swept newly-fallen snow off porch steps. 

Cautiously, I embrace Spring. 

Cautiously, I remember hope.

Cautiously, I again agree to wait on Jesus.