by Lucinda Secrest McDowell
Do you sometimes feel that Spring will never come?
Even today in March as I post this Easter page, it is snowing outside!
Frankly I'm tired of looking at the frozen ground, and bare branches.
I'm ready for green! Last year my husband and daughter planted hundreds
of bulbs in our yard. All these many months they've been hidden below in
cold and darkness. We only trust they are growing
because there is no visual evidence of any life.
Winter
sometimes feels like death, doesn't it?
One of my favorite 19th century poets put it this way:
"My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk;
Truly my life is void and brief, And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see;
Yet rise it shall-- the Sap of Spring; O Jesus, rise in me!"
~ Christina Rossetti "A Better Resurrection"
(complete poem found in Amazed By Grace)
Isn't that what Easter is all about --- death, buried into darkness,
and then NEW LIFE and RESURRECTION?
The
prophet Isaiah mentioned Christ as
"a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground." Isaiah 53.2
No matter how dry the ground, how frozen or dark,
there is hope for NEW LIFE when there is trust in God.
Today's
layer of white actually accentuates the tiny green shoots
bravely peeking through with the promise of daffodils and tulips
and crocuses to blossom forth in the near future.
It happens this way every year. Every Spring NEW LIFE bursts forth
and everyone concentrate on bunnies and chicks and ducklings.
But these are only symbols of Eastertide -- they are not the real Easter.
After
Christ was cheered with palm branches
upon entering Jerusalem, he later turned to his disciples and tried to convey
to them what was ahead: "The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.
I tell you the truth, unless a kernal of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds...it was for
this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!" John 12.23,24,28
See, death is neccessary for life! Yes, that's one of the great paradoxes
of the Christian faith. But it has been borne out time and time again.
Because Jesus Christ was willing to die,
we who believe in Him, are now able to live forever!
That's
why I celebrate Easter morning
every year at sunrise in the 17th century burying ground in our village.
About a hundred of us trudge up the hill in the dark and watch the light dawn
bringing NEW HOPE and NEW LIFE. Our brass praise band plays
"Christ the Lord Is Risen Today" while we look around at both the evidence
of DEATH (tombstones of our forefathers) and the evidence of LIFE
(bulbs bursting forth and also lives opening up to Him).
How
do you celebrate Easter?
One way to start might be singing this hymn to a familiar tune ("Danny Boy")
and recognizing that truly Christ has brought life out of death:
"I cannot tell why He the Joy of heaven
Should give Himself to suffer for my sin,
Why Holy God should love me in my shamefulness
Why He should die to draw my soul to Him,
But this I know ~ that Christ the Lord is risen
And praise His Name ~ He's risen now in me!
Because He lives I'll rise to life eternal!
He took my guilty heart and I'm forever free!"
~ "I Cannot Tell" tune-Londonderry Air
copyright 2002 Lucinda Secrest McDowell
To read my Lenten Message 
