The familiar path of Lent winding in and out of weeks toward Easter has led us into unfamiliar landscapes this year, and it’s easy to feel like we are suddenly adrift. But I open the curtains to greet a new day and the morning rains have soaked the ground again. Daffodils are pushing slim green stalks out of the ground and the birds are twittering in the puddles. The earth is coming alive around us, no matter what the Evening News said last night. It anchors my spirit, seeing how these simple things do not change…and maybe they are the largest most important things of all, because they are the foundations on which we stand.
This earth in all its complexity, springing forth from nothing at the words of a Creator God, is held in its rhythms day by day with the strength of His will, and all of us are born and die within its seasons. I can get wound up in the worries and needs of my own life, and forget the larger perspective. It is good for me to stop and look at the softening ground and the budding trees that continue to do what God made them to do, despite the growing stresses of human governments. It calms my spirit to remember that the Winter was turning to Spring without fail, long before I was born, and that my own seasons have come and gone through the years. Time will flow on– what presses so hard now will soon only be memory, and I will change and grow within its movement. This is truth that remains. The Musician-King said God wrote His name in the skies as a reminder for us: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth…” (Psalm 19:1) And isn’t this the purpose of Lent, to slow down and listen, pay attention to the truth woven into creation and remember that we were made to worship Him?
So today I remind myself that the days will keep counting down to Easter resurrection, and nothing can change the miracle that happened in that Garden Tomb so long ago. This is big-picture truth to hang onto, an unmoving foundation for our spirits no matter what comes into our everyday life. We cling to this promise, that “…He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who lives in you.: (Romans 8:11) Our lives are bound up in Christ’s death and resurrection, a miracle much too large to be affected by the shifting curves of statistics or the fears of what if. We do not know what the next months hold, but God does, and He is already working all things out. His song echoes down through the centuries, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 46:10)
The grass is turning green this week under the grace of rain, and the Creator’s compassions are new every morning, as they have ever been. Easter is coming.
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Grander earth has quaked before,
It Is Well, Kristene DiMarco
Moved by the sound of His voice;
Seas that are shaken and stirred
Can be calmed and broken for my regard.
And through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You;
And through it all, through it all
It is well…
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Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet My unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor My covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
Isaiah 54:10