Snow & Easter

Here's a writing that will appear in the upcoming newsletter of CMFMC. I wrote it about a week ago.
______________

As I write this article the snow is falling again. I’ve heard many people say, “this is the most snow we’ve received in years.”

Some people ask me, “are you still enjoying the snow?” I am. Yet I hear people, even in my own home who are saying, “it’s time for spring.”

The current discussion reminds me of a curmudgeon song from Trans-Siberian Orchestra (they perform a Christmas rock-opera), What is Christmas. The ornery lyric reads: THE REASON FOR CHRISTMAS I NOW REALIZE IS AN EXCUSE TO TOLERATE SNOW, SNOW!

The opportunity exists for us to have snow this year at Easter. If that holds, some of us may have little resurrection cheer. Our spirits may find it hard to accommodate the external appearance with a season we typically think of as bursting with dogwood blossoms. Yet there can be a reasonable metaphor for us.

Several years ago I received a note from my grandmother. She wrote to me of hosting my youngest brother during a big snowfall. She had an old chicken coop on her farm. It had long ago given up hosting chickens, or pigs or other animals. Its last holdings were things that didn’t need much protection – my grandmother called it junk. She wrote of how the storm had blown the snow through the window openings and the roof. Inside the coop there was a clean white blanket, covering all the junk. She wrote of walking through the coop with my brother, enjoying the sight of white beauty where previously there was the sight of junk. Then she made the connection – that’s what Jesus’ blood does for us. He shed it, so that the sin and junk in our lives can be covered, cleansed, brought to reflect the beauty of God, our Creator.

Our lives that can be filled the sin, pain, dreams gone sour, and unright relationships need a cleansing, need the blood of Jesus that covers our sin. The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 5.8 and following: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

If Easter comes and the snow is still lingering – give thanks for the shedding of Christ’s blood that brings to us reconciliation with God. Rejoice that through Christ, your sin is covered. Rejoice that His life sets us on the journey of discipleship that is the “much more” of what Paul writes of.

If the snow is gone, give thanks too – that the winter is broken, maybe the winter of your soul, and just as nature introduces us to new life – may Jesus bring forth new life and new journeys to you and your home. May you rejoice this Easter – in the offering of Jesus and in His mighty Resurrection!