Some Spring in Your Step

Hip hip hooray for Spring!



Sometimes, your life feels like it's stuck in winter. Everything's gray and people are cold. Icy shoulders, chilly glances. Not to pummel this metaphor to death, but sometimes, you just feel...lifeless.

I've had my share of bad. A precious student of mine passed away, unexpectedly, last week. Friends let me down. I come home to find people literally pissing on my doorstep. I can't see the stars at night for all the pollution. My dearest loved ones are an ocean away. I search for relief by sitting in a pew, only to feel like a robot performing commands.

I'm sure you have your own list, ready to pull out and compare, but let's not do that now.

I want to refocus, realign. Repent. I want metanoia, a changing of the mind.

When I do this, I realize everyday is Spring for those hidden in Christ! (Side note: of course, in our lives, we go through "seasons" due to emotions and the world we live in. In Christ, however, we do have eternal "Spring". "This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness." - Lamentations 3:21-23) Every single crappy (or happy!) day is full of Life and Love. More than I can imagine. Overflowing. That's part of the "Good News".

How quickly we forget that now is the year of Jubilee!
Now is the champagne celebration.
Now is the time to love and be loved.
Now is the day the Lord has made. God is now because God is I Am. If my God is now, why can't everything I've been promised through that Life be mine now?
Well, it is. All I have to realize is that now is Spring. (And tomorrow, too!)

And do you know what's the best part about this time, this "Spring"? We don't make it happen! What I mean is, we don't tighten our bootstraps, grab the shovel and go out to toil in the soil in the hopes that maybe one flower pops up. No! The sun shines, the rain falls and we sit back in wonder as Life takes hold and everything begins to bloom. All is in a marvelous state of rebirth. And we can't start it or stop it. We enjoy it.

In one of my favorite books (which you already know if you've read my blog), Brennan Manning quotes Donald McCullough in the following:
“Grace means that in the middle of our struggle the referee blows the whistle and announces the end of the game. We are declared winners and sent to the showers. It’s over for all huffing, puffing piety to earn God’s favor; it’s finished for all sweat-soaked straining to secure self-worth; it’s the end of all competitive scrambling to get ahead of others in the game. Grace means that God is on our side and thus we are victors regardless of how well we have played the game. We might as well head for the showers and the champagne celebration.”

Life isn't supposed to be pounding the pavement to work, passing blank faces, feeling nothing inside your bubble except the weight of the world. Life is a ticker tape parade! You can't help but have some spring in your step when you realize spring has sprung.


Newsboys - Million Pieces por wanzea