Dear West Family

Before I get into it this week,  if you are like me, then you may well be running out of words to pray when it comes to the horrific situation in Ukraine. I found the prayer guide that 24-7 prayer made available to be helpful. You can find that resource here. 

On to this week’s thoughts.

It’s pretty much spring, which means that another “Polar bomb cyclone” is due to hit this weekend. Just as things felt like they were starting to turn, winter wanted one more say in the matter. Not even the seasons like to be told what to do in Texas. The independence in this state runs that deep. 

I was bemoaning spring’s delay just the other day as I was using the most quintessentially suburban tool of passive aggression known to man … the leaf blower, to try and remove the last evidences of winter. I love the leaf blower. It makes an almighty racket, and it takes things that we don’t want on our own lawns and effortlessly deposits them on our neighbor’s lawn. Welcome to the depths of suburban rebellion.

As I was working in the yard I was looking longingly for any evidences of spring I could find.I love spring. I can’t wait for the buds to appear and for the miracle of new life to bust through what looks totally dead. With that in mind, the reflection this week is actually taken from the foreword that I wrote for our new book of liturgies, called “Words for Spring.” I hope you enjoy it.

Yours is the day, yours also the night;
You have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
You have made summer and winter

- Psalm 74:16-17 (ESV)

I am so thankful that God created seasons as part of the rhythmic pulse through which we measure the passing of years. In His creative genius, God knew that we would benefit from mile markers on the highways of our collective journeys, as if nature itself offers us sacred reminders of the ground our lives have covered, and the distance we have yet to go before we make it home. Their repetition and regularity help to break up the seemingly random onslaught of joys and sorrows that we inevitably encounter, and comfort us as we attach markers to memories and ever nearer horizons to futures.

Summer follows spring, with a lengthening of days and a slowing of cadence, with our urgency turned to the ongoing pursuit of the cool of shade, or the pool, or the sea. We welcome summer’s arrival and then, by August, we long for it to let up.

Fall follows summer, with a shortening of those long days of relentless heat, and the comfort of cooler evenings, and sweatpants, and hoodies and other things we haven’t worn for months. The comfort of the cool comes at the cost of cadence, as busy lives blow right through this most beautiful of seasons.

Winter follows fall, always too soon, with the great natural reset of dormancy. The earth takes a rest beneath the blanket of frost, resting but ready for resurrection. It seems dead, but it’s just sleeping. The crispness of the air reminds us that we have turned away from the sun, but remain safely bound to enough of its warmth to sustain us again.

And then, spring follows winter, with green shoots of new life bursting from tombs which held things we forgot were actually alive. Wild flowers bloom in places where their seeds were long forgotten, and where beauty seems unlikely. God makes it all new again. We get another go around, with new life, new hope, new optimism and new mercies. 

Spring is a reminder that God makes dead things alive. 

This is why I love that in the Northern Hemisphere, Easter takes place in spring. I grew up in the Southern Hemisphere where Easter is autumnal, and so has a mood of sober acknowledgment that death precedes new life. But a spring Easter reminds us that new life most certainly follows the coldest of winters, and resurrection occurs from the darkest of tombs.  The account of Jesus Christ, dying for us, and being laid in a borrowed tomb, where all seems lost feels like the dormancy of winter. It doesn’t seem as if any life could possibly come from it. And yet, that cold tomb was opened to the warmth of God’s resurrecting power as the regenerating breath of heaven blew over a dormant place of death on earth, and new life broke into the long winter of the world. 

Spring follows winter.
Resurrection follows death.
Glory follows suffering.
God makes all things new.

Don’t rush through the season, but rather use it as a time to consider the new life of the resurrection that Jesus makes available to us all.

One more thing. I love this version of “Every Breaking Wave” by U2. Ignore the pretense of the clearly extremely wealthy New England backdrop and just listen to this incredible vocal performance. 

U2 Perform Rare, Intimate Version on "Every Breaking Wave" [EXCLUSIVE]

See you Sunday.
Ross