Today’s the first day of spring.  We will have over 12 hours of daylight.  Now, if only we could get the sun to shine for a majority of those hours.  Kidding, the sun’s shining right now.  Okay, well, it was for a few minutes.

I like spring.  Dark, rainy winters give way to all that’s good and right with the world.The ducks have gathered at our local pond and are pairing off.  The birds are singing early in the morning when Anita and I go for a walk.  The flowers are blooming - way ahead of the frigid lands to the east.  We’ve had a long winter, an unbearably long winter in B.C. this year.  Winter started in November and blasted us with cold, snow, wind, rain, flooding (whatever happened to global warming?).  But we will soon forget winter’s raging because the sun will shine, the days will warm and we will love being the place in Canada that everybody envies.

What amazes me is that this is the way God always works.  Whatever has raged in our lives - illness, relational hardships, work struggles, personal challenges - can give way to a new day.  God can work springlike wonders even in our own lives.  Yes, the wintry times can seem unbearable.  God can be silent (cf. Israel’s captivity in Egypt for over 400 years - Exodus 12:40).  Job endured God’s silence while his friends blathered at him about what he needed to do.  Even Jesus experienced the silence of God on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” he cried.

But remarkably God’s silence gives way.  Even the wintertime of our souls will find respite in God’s springtime.  For each spring, in addition to lengthening days, we celebrate the one day that makes every dark day different - each spring there comes an Easter.  All of our days are changed forever because Jesus has been raised from the dead.  See, like spring’s day of sun and new life we are certain we do not face a hopeless end.  No, in the resurrection of Jesus we are promised endless hope.  And God gives us sunshine just to sweeten things up a bit.