By Rick Chromey
Spring is a beautiful time of year.
Flowers bloom. Trees bud. Babies are everywhere. Daylight saving time provides an extra hour of sun nightly. Barbecues, backyards, and baseball are back.
Springtime is a testimony to God’s redemption. As temperatures warm, the snow and ice melt, the days lengthen, and a new world emerges from winter hibernation. What was dead now has life. What was brown now is green. What was dark now is light.
It’s no wonder God used the spring of the year to release his final redemptive act to mankind. The Easter story is perfectly pitched in the spring, when a world, gripped by evil frost and sinful darkness, is melted by the power of a single Son rise.
The story of spring is Resurrection.
The prophet predicted this messianic springtime when he wrote how the coming “Sovereign Lord” would “destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations,” how death would be “swallowed,” and tears and the disgrace of the people would be wiped away (Isaiah 25:7, 8). Isaiah lived in a dark, cold, wintry world but he foresaw that a divine spring was coming.
The years and tears of disgrace, desperation, doubt, and death would eventually end. Isaiah’s spiritual winter wouldn’t last forever.
John echoes this prophecy in his own Revelation when he penned how the Messiah “will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Unlike Isaiah, John experienced the Messiah in the flesh. He personally felt the warmth of God’s Son and witnessed the ever-lengthening day of this new messianic kingdom. For him, this divine springtime was a spiritual reality.
It’s a reality that we still enjoy today.
Therefore, as we gather around this table of Communion on this spring day in May, we are blessed just like John to enjoy a kingdom of light, power, peace, and hope. This cup, which represents the blood of Christ, and this bread, which represents his body, remind us that the best is yet to come. We look back to remember, but we also look forward in hope.
Spring is God’s best story. It’s a season of resurrections.
And it’s a reminder that no winter is eternal.
Rick Chromey is president of MANNA! Educational Services International (www.mannasolutions.org) in Meridian, Idaho.
Author: Christian Standard
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