Spring is what happens below the surface

The in-between isn’t pretty. Ask the creature in the cocoon. Ask the subterranean bulbs that have been piled under snow for the last few weeks. If the cold and wind weren’t enough, we have traded the one-stunning mantle of pure white snow for piles of ice, sullied by every manner of filth the city has to offer. Half-dead grass is bordered and cut by mud in places where plows found their way off the road and sidewalks. Their tires wreaked havoc on the turf.

But this unconventional aeration, this intense saturation has fed the soil. Processes beyond what the eye can see, in some ways smaller and other ways bigger, lay the foundation for new life, rebirth.

And despite all apparent odds, in the truly bleak midwinter, silent trumpets emerge from the earth. Their glory is not what they are, but what they will be – daffodils and tulips and irises and hyacinth.

This morning I spent a good deal of time talking to one of my ESOL students, who told me story after story that humbled and awed me. She has faced difficulties I cannot imagine: an arranged marriage with a horrible man, forced to flee from her home country, separated from her children, led to a place of despair I cannot begin to fathom.

But you would never know this amazing woman’s history from her attitude toward life now, the topics of conversation she brings up. Every other phrase out of her mouth is a praise to God – whether for the wonderful husband He has now blessed her with, reunification with her daughter (and an increasing likelihood that her son will soon join them), the freedoms this country affords. Her entire life is a vibrant hymn of praise.

She could not imagine this sort of spring during her winter-time; that’s what she told me today. But even as she was forced to leave her country, deprived of all things familiar, her Creator was laying the groundwork for a godly marriage and a new home that brought all the threads of her old life back together – at least, the ones that matter. The pressure, the tremendous sorrow, were all ultimately for her good and God’s glory.

Which is what I say I believe. So why am I so floored when I see it?

I have never had a winter so severe as my friend’s. I tend to cause most of my own heartache. Pride. Misplaced affections. Sin. And I struggle, because I am not was I was, and yet, I am so far from what I ought to be, as I have been amply reminded this week. But I was reminded today to get my eyes off the winter circumstances that dominate my fears and imagination, and raise them to the Master of the seasons.

Because spring is, at least in part, what happens below the surface. And He is Lord of that, too.