Take a big nose full of air today. A long breath into your nostrils. Notice anything? The air is still dead. It’s fresh and clear but it’s dead. The hard winter has kept the spring from coming to Western New York. The snow is still melting in our parking lot. The only sure signs of spring have been the geese returning overhead and the crocuses in their crazy purple and yellow. There is no life in the air.
But that is all about to change. An absolute revelation is about to happen. The earth is about to come to life. Green will cover the ground everywhere. Trees will bud, flowers of all kinds will be every-where. And, filling the air will be this brand new smell (I’ve forgotten just how it smells – – – it’s been almost five months). Life.
Imagine, if we had to pay our town government for Spring 2015 . . . “Let’s see now. . . it’ll be $5 mill for the air conditioning, $19 mill for the flowers, and $27 mill for the grass and trees.” It’s all free!! You see God has designed it to happen that way- – -so you could have a garden and greet your neighbor and work on your putting or just let your mind wonder at the beauty of it all. New life.
I wonder if there is a tree or bush anywhere that says “no” to this new life. “No, leave me alone, it’s to hard here.”
“Waking up again to all that happens—drought, wind storms, insects, losing leaves, winter, ice storms. . . I just don’t want anymore.” It’s hard coming to life again. It’s easier to stay dead sometimes.
Friends, today we celebrate the hope of what we call Eternal Life. It is a life that nature cannot produce and for which this springtime is only a glimmer. Eternal Life can come only from He who is eternal.
And, so God like a good farmer, has sent His Son into nature. And like a seed Jesus entered the earth to die (“Unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains just a grain of wheat”).
Having died and been buried in the earth, Jesus is today raised from the dead!! God has begun the New Creation.
Now the question remains, —- do you want this new springtime? Do you want to risk the uncertainties of life for the sake of the prize—Life on high with Jesus Christ? I do!
A Blessed Easter.
With Love, Fr. Tim
