Lately, I’ve been thinking about springtime. The trees are blossoming. Flowers are blooming. Color is beginning to re-enter our neighborhood. The full beauty of a new season is upon us.

And yet.

It still feels like winter. The city has shut down. Stillness hovers over our neighborhoods. We no longer gather with our friends. The signs of life are not present. The bustle and activity of human flourishing is absent. Things seem… dead.

In her devotional book entitled “Cultivate,” worship leader Melissa Helser describes a time of suffering in loneliness. Though the season was difficult, it forced her to be still. She began to view her suffering as a winter for her soul. During that time, she penned the words below:

If you walked into the woods and began to scream and cry and shout to the tallest oak and the mighty maple, “Don’t worry; don’t be afraid. You will bloom again one day! Don’t be disheartened--you will one day be covered with your brilliant leaves; spring will come,” [the trees] would lean down into your humanity and speak with wisdom so deep it would rattle your soul. They would say, “Small person, we are not afraid. We are at rest. We are not anxious. We know that in the chill of the winter, we dig our roots deep into the earth. We are not dead and barren as you think. We are alive and living and growing. We know that even in seasons of stillness we grow, sometimes more than in seasons of fruitfulness.” 

Melissa goes on to recount how God began to minister to her in the midst of the suffering. The sentence God continued to speak to her was: “This winter is your gift.” 

It is certainly not common to view winter (suffering) as a gift. And even though that was Melissa’s personal experience with her own pain, I believe Scripture points every believer to this truth: what God does through suffering leads to our greatest triumphs. 

Pause for a moment and consider this question: what is the greatest triumph of Jesus Christ? Certainly we would all agree it was His resurrection from the dead. If we need clarification on this matter, the Apostle Paul tells us plainly:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15)

If Christ was not resurrected, then our faith is in vain. Think about that for a moment. Everything in the Old Testament. Every miraculous story. Moses leading the Israelites through the Red Sea. David defeating Goliath. All in vain. Everything Jesus does in the Gospels. Every healing. Every teaching. Raising Lazarus from the dead. All in vain. If He did not raise from the dead, then all of it is pointless.

Therefore, the foundation of our faith is the resurrection. I would go so far as to say that the centerpiece of all history is the resurrection. Everything in the Old Testament points forward to the resurrection, and everything in the New Testament points back to it. It is everything.

Keep this in mind: our King could have no resurrection had He not suffered and died. That’s what resurrection means: to come back from the dead. Our faith hinges on the life that came after His suffering. Light coming after darkness. Flourishing following a season of famine. Spring following winter.

Don’t you see? In the very fabric of creation, God has set an annual reminder that He works through the winter (suffering). Every springtime, we are reminded of His desire to bring life after death. “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. (Romans 1)

That flower budding in cracks of your sidewalk? It is singing the song of the resurrection. Butterflies emerging from coffin-like cocoons? A song of the resurrection. God, in His tender kindness, has set reminders all around you. Reminders that He works during the winter. Jesus spent three days in the winter of the tomb, and then came bursting forth in glorious spring. 

But what about us? We are stuck in the winter of Covid-19. Loneliness and anxiety threaten our faith. The effects of the winter take a toll. Our hearts grow weary. We are prone to laziness, worry, frustration with children, impatience as we wait for government decisions, and the idolization of comfort. We grieve the loss of connection with our friends, we grieve canceled weddings and canceled graduations, we grieve and we cannot even reach out our hands for comfort. The winter is heavy.

Perhaps...

Perhaps God is keeping us in the stillness of winter to draw us back to Him. Perhaps we have grown too focused on Sunday experiences; too reliant on the rhythms put in place for us by our leaders. Perhaps we are too dependent on Godly friendships, neglecting to meet with God on our own. Perhaps we are settling for bite-sized spirituality, ushered in by the apps on our phones, neglecting to open the Holy Word of God. Perhaps, with the lack of regular hustle and busyness, God wants to speak to you. 

In Hosea, God made it clear that He was going to use a season of suffering to “allure” His people and “speak tenderly” to them (2:14). He allowed the winter (suffering) so that it could give way to spring (intimacy). He used suffering to rekindle intimacy with His people.

I encourage you to spend time with God in the stillness. Cry with Him. Struggle with Him. If you don’t journal, I encourage you to start. Have conversations with him. Turn your phone off and spend time reading His word. Pray. Pray. Pray. 

Do not despise your winter. Let this time be the gift God wants it to be. And look forward to the spring. Things will be even more beautiful then; that’s how resurrection works. Spring will burst forth after the winter of Covid-19. Though we may appear dead, we will bloom. 

*As I sit with these truths, here is a song that has blessed me: Springtime, by Chris Renzema.

If you’re looking for a Boston church to call home and a community to grow with in your relationship with God, we’d love to see you visit King’s Hill.