Well Spring has finally sprung!! Hooray, I hear you cry! I love the spring, the light nights bring a welcome relief from the endless dark winter months, the change in the weather brings the hope of summer and the new bulbs and flowers bring a colour and vibrancy that we’ve missed through the bareness of the trees and plants during the winter.
All this brings a change of heart, it brings a sense of new life and expectancy as we look forward to the Spring and Summer months that lie ahead. Our minds turn to holidays and all the possibilities of days out. For me, I also begin to look forward to enjoying some days out on the motorbike – these bring a deep sense of freedom and satisfaction. They are also an opportunity to relax where I can find myself in complete quiet and isolation. It’s in those moments that I often find myself spontaneously turning to prayer. In the stillness God becomes very real!
Indeed I was talking with someone this month about the need to find that time of rest and relaxation, but fundamentally about the importance of learning to ‘Be Still’ in God’s presence. Indeed Psalm 46:10 says ‘Be still and know that I am God’. The next time you find yourself feeling stretched or rushed off your feet. I encourage you to try and find that place of being still in God’s presence, you don’t have to physically be still, like on my motorbike, its finding that place where God can touch you and you can rest in him.
We’ve just celebrated Easter, the most important of all the Christian festivals. The Easter story reminds us of the hope of new life that is found in Jesus, the knowledge that we are invited into a new relationship with God, that we are accepted, forgiven and restored and because Jesus defeated death and rose from the grave we are also assured of his presence with us at all times.
This is the part of the Easter message that is so important. In order to reach the joy of Easter Sunday, we first of all had to go through the most difficult of days – Good Friday. As Christians we need to know the reality of Good Friday, of our part in that most difficult days. Yes, we were there! You and me – Jesus took our sins to the cross, so that we can be set free to live life to the full! (John 10:10)
But it also reminds me, that as Christians we will go through ups and downs in life. Just because we have a faith in Jesus doesn’t mean we’re exempt from trial or hardship. Indeed, if we read our bibles we will see so many of Jesus’ followers who suffered. Life is hard at times, this is the reality of living in a fallen and broken world.
However, the amazing truth of Easter is that this fallen and broken world has a saviour! That you and I have a saviour! That we can live life safe in the knowledge that when we go through lifes difficult moments we are assured of God’s presence, his love and his grace. That we can indeed live life in glorious all year round technicolour (not just in the spring and summer) as we begin to see things through his eyes.
So this Spring may you enjoy the signs of new life, the glorious colours as they break through bringing an end to the long winter months and may you begin to draw the links of the new life that Christ offers to you as you live each day for him. And as His resurrection people may we (like the spring flowers) make a real difference in the world around us as God uses us for his glory.