Spring is here! The weather is getting warmer (thank you Jesus!), the trees are beginning to bloom, the days are getting longer, what used to seem dead is coming back to life. That really is what spring is all about, the dead of winter is leaving and being replaced by life. There is a tree on the side of the highway between Albany and Cordele that I noticed a couple of months ago. When I saw it I thought to myself, “That is the ugliest tree I have ever seen.” It was bare of any foliage, which in and of itself was not strange since it was winter, but its branches were gnarled and dense. The tree looked like it came out of a horror movie. It was the type of tree that says, “Don’t come any closer, you have no idea what lurks beyond this point.” I did not like to look at it.
Yesterday as I made that same drive I noticed the tree again. No longer grasped by the dead of winter the tree was in the midst of a transformation. Brilliant flowers of white and pick hues covered the twisted branches of the monster, and thereby I discovered that it really was not as monstrous as I thought. No leaves yet covered her branches but life had begun to flow in her once more. What before I did not like to look at sang out with a glorious chorus to a God who makes all things new. Where I only saw ugly, God saw the potential of beauty and glory. When I wondered why someone didn’t just cut that tree down, God waited for the right moment to make sure I would never see that tree the same way again.
How often life works in such ways? How many people have we glanced right over, thinking that they had no potential, that their lives were ugly beyond repair, and that it would be best if we just gave up on them since it seemed as though life had given up on them too? Or what about those times when we think such thoughts but the person we are staring at as we think them is in the mirror? Each of us has at some awful point watched our own tears fall as we wondered how little we mattered, and discovered how ugly we were. Yet in any moment we ponder the worthlessness of either someone else or ourselves, God is there too. God sees what we cannot see, potential for beauty and glory. Not only does God see that potential God is ready to unleash it upon the created order!
I believe that in God’s great providence Easter had to coincide with spring, the symbolism was too great to ignore. A bare tree set on top of a mount called Calvary that had nothing but ugliness and death associated with it, overcome by the grand glory of the Almighty One. Flowers bloom and leaves spring forth to announce that the death of winter is overcome once more and we celebrate the event that announced to the world death never wins! The tomb was but a bud that would blossom forth the beauty of the ages, a resurrected Savior.
Too often we have focused our attention on what is, instead of what can be and what will be when God is at work. Perhaps our vision is too narrow. We look at the mess of the world and of our lives and we allow that mess to dictate what is, believing that what is is what will be. What was death on a cross and a tomb enclosed to house the dead One would look to us to be the final word. But that is only what can be seen with a narrow vision. The vision of God being as wide as time itself knew something greater was on the horizon, that nothing but His Word is the final word. God peered upon the hopeless situation where the narrow visions would attempt to spread despair and said, “We shall wait three days, and what was ugly will be beautiful!”
For three months we have gone through winter and the death it brings, but no winter is final, a spring always comes next. Each spring we celebrate a death overcome, and the promise of all death overcome. This spring let us widen our vision to see in the midst of the ugly and worthless places of our own lives and the lives of others, the promise of God’s vision which brings with it potential and hope. Then we will know that God can make everything and everyone become God’s hope and joy!
Riding the Wave of the Holy Spirit,
Garrett
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