24 February 2015
Tuesday of the First Week of Lent
I have lived many years in northern places with long snowy winters. By late February, even if there is much snow, the icicles get very long, because the sun is getting stronger and daily melting more of the rooftop snow, even if it becomes very hard, thick ice for awhile. Spring is right around the corner – granted some corners can extend well into May…
And all the while the earth is snowbound, miracles are taking place underneath that thick blanket. Unseen by us, unknown by us, sometimes even unhoped for by us. It all belongs: the earth and what lies in it, the white shroud of snow on the apparently dead earth. And then, as the sun strengthens and the snow begins to trickle, new life unfailingly pokes through to greet that source of life. God loves fertility: it is His command that we be fruitful and multiply.
So it is with His Word. A phrase of God’s Word can lie dormant for decades, and then emerge at a key moment to change the course of a life. The life-giving power of God is infinitely greater than the life-giving power built into creation, and the drama of life and death and resurrection is far greater and more mysterious than that which we see in the lower creation around us. Yet as He promises, God’s Word sent out into the world will accomplish the work for which He sent it. And so we trust in His promises, and build our lives on the assurance that Jesus will come back for us and bring us to an eternal home with Him (Jn. 14:3). That is, if we have died with Him (Rom. 6:8)….
Patience. His ways are not our ways…. His timetable is not our timetable. Patience.