The boys are home.
Two brothers, large and loud, that fill the space in my tiny house with their piles of shoes and their dirty T-shirts and their hey-ma-can-you-slide-me-a-few-bones-heh-heh-heh?’s.
I suppose you never know how quiet it has become until the void is filled with he-volume and you find yourself yelling over the classic rock pulsing out of the bluetooth COULD YOU PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE PUT YOUR DISHES IN THE SINK?
I’ve been trying to be still.
Stuck in what seems like a never-ending season of disappointment, I’ve grown weary of trying to fix it all.
How do you fix winter?
Cold and dry and dead, the scenery of my life seems frozen in the casualties that have mounted loss upon loss upon loss until I am wary of holding anything close to me ever again should it, too, be torn out of my grasp.
Seasons aren’t supposed to last forever. Autumn follows summer follows spring follows winter, especially in New England, best place on the planet to live, so I am aware that these sneaky snows will one day give way to greengreen grass and budding branches and streams of living water flowing fast and full.
What to do in the meantime?
Where does the new growth dwell, before it becomes a brass blade bullying up through the ice or a bulb busting open, spilling its tulip or crocus or daffodil up to the sun?
Dormant, these seeds lie lifeless under frozen soil waiting, waiting, waiting for the precise moment when promise crosses opportunity.
Jesus knew a thing or two about hibernation. In predicting his death, he said, “I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)
Jesus, You were the seed.
Your body broke open and died, fallen under Roman hands and Jewish “law,” but didn’t You startle them all? And although I feel we are living in the most exciting time on earth, where Church Age and Kingdom Age seem to be colliding at an ever-accelerating rate, I think I would give anything to have been there to see the reaction when You first came strolling down the beach.
Talk about a change in season. What hope!
Because Jesus also tells us that we are the seed.
Here’s the The Message translation of that same passage: Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.
Our seed-lives, if kept on a shelf quietly decaying, will never produce so much as a sprout of life.
But bury that seed in the sod, tamp down the dirt and wait, through seasons of summerautumnwinterspring, at last, unrestrained, it unfurls itself courageous and bold, becoming life, life, and more life: forever life, real and eternal.
Paul put it this way: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.” (2 Corinthians 4: 7-12)
I think of the son no longer here in body, no longer loud.
His quiet presence permeates everything and everywhere, his life-seed broken loose on that awfulbeautiful day.
He was here for a season, and if we are to learn anything from his unfurling it might be this: hold things loosely; be reckless in your love, never allowing regret or bitterness or anger or unforgiveness to spoil the landscape of your life, for if you do this, you may find that the harvest is reproduced many times over until it “yields a crop a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13: 23)
So we sow hope and reap joy, through long seasons of winter and chill, because spring is coming, it is, even when we are tempted to doubt, even when we can’t see, even when we feel like giving up.
Don’t give up.
(I’m preaching to myself here.)
Believe this: the Master Planter is at work.
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” (2 Corinthians 4: 16-17)
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