Spring Flowers

A friend and I were out fishing several days ago along the North Branch of the Potomac River and as we walked to the spot where we would enter the river and begin to fish we saw the first flowers of spring growing along the trail. I always love to see these small flowers that grow up so early that they are bound to experience a snow. I wonder why they don’t wait 2 more weeks until it is almost certain that there will be no more snow and then come up. That day was close to 80 degrees and the sun was hot on our backs as we fished along the river, and the flowers loved it. No less than three days later it was snowing and the flowers were struggling to hold on to the colors that had shown so brightly just a couple of days before.

Soon the sun will be out again and the flowers will shine all the brighter, but as I sit here I wonder why they come up so early. Why go through the life threatening cold that often comes during the first 2 weeks of April? Why not wait until the sun shines brightly and these is no danger of being frozen after only a few short days of life? The answer is of course that God made them that way. They are the true harbingers of spring. The cool thing is that they will survive the cold. It really doesn’t last that long, and I know that when I next wet my line in the waters of the North Branch those flowers will be bursting forth with their radiant beauty once again.

As I thought of those flowers I began to think of my life. How often I have waited to bloom, not wanting to be made truly vulnerable to the cold winters of life. Often we as Christians think of Heaven and we can’t wait to get there, for there we will blossom and show forth our true unadulterated, God given, glory. This world just seems to be the kind of place that takes the heavenly kind of beauty and tramples it into the mud, and so we bide our time, flowing all the rules that we as good Christians are supposed to follow until we enter into the glorious sunlight of heaven. Winter we think shall not last too much longer, and yet it seems to last for far too long. Jesus however, calls us to bloom now. He calls us to lay down our lives, to be buried with Him; much like a seed is buried in the ground before it can become a flower. Once we lay our lives down, give them to Him, trust in His power to forgive sins, we are called to rise. Not rise when we get to heaven, no we are called to rise now, to show the world who we truly are. To, like those flowers, stand firm against the cold winds of the world and tell the truth that there is something better coming.

The cold wind, rain, and snow, of early spring soon melts into the warm life giving late spring and summer, April showers truly do bring May flowers. The hardships of this world the pain and suffering, the fear and uncertainty, will soon fade away into the glorious Life of Heaven. We are called just as those small flowers are the harbingers of spring, to be the harbingers of the Kingdom of Heaven.

1 Peter 3:15 But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the Hope that you have within you.

What is this hope that is within us? It is the hope that one day we will be set free to be who God created us to be. We will know who we are and He will make available to us every resource that we need to fulfill that role, and there will be no opposition to this transformation. Why do people ask us about the hope? I think that not too many people ask Christians about that hope anymore. Why? Because we have not begun to bloom, we hold the hope within us, waiting till we get “there” to blossom. But Christ calls us to bloom now, sure it will be hard snow will come, there is opposition. The Devil hates who we want to become, He hates us because he hates God. It is not easy to live with hope in this world, not easy to let go of “things” knowing that they will pass away and that some day we will be with God. It is hard to live life with an eternal perspective, but Christ calls us to do it. He calls us to live an eternal kind of life right now.

Will you surrender to Christ and seek to become the person He has made you to be even though the world will hate you for it?