Anna Resurget

Today is Anna’s birthday. She would be 20 today! A friend brought flowers to Timberley this morning. She apologized because the blossoms were all small. I carried them to the kitchen to put them in a vase. Timberley said what I was thinking. “The flowers are small, but they remind me of Anna.” I assume this is universal, but with the passing of years, the person we lost has been frozen in time. Anna will always be nine. She is unimaginable as a 20 year old college student.

Today is also a very beautiful early spring day here in Wake Forest. We have had several false starts to spring, but I think this one is for real. The sun is shining. I can hear birds outside. We started a new enterprise in our backyard. We are raising chickens for eggs. When I went to see them this morning, their plumage is getting beautiful. The cherry trees all over town are blossoming. The dogwoods will come soon.

I had lunch with a friend on Wednesday and he asked me how Anna’s death had changed me. I didn’t know how to answer that. Maybe because so much has happened since  that time. There have been so many changes in our lives. But one very real, very tangible change in me is that spring time has so much more meaning now. This is the time when the dormancy and death of winter gives way to the awakening and new life of spring. Springtime is the annual notice that the hope we maintained all winter was not in vain.

The psalmist in Psalm 19 tells us that God’s creation tells of his wonders. I see in the transition of winter to spring the gospel of Jesus Christ. The death that comes as a result of sin gives way to the new life that comes by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Nature is proclaiming the gospel of God.

May this spring time be to each of you a reminder, or maybe the first news for some of you, that God’s plan is for salvation and life. And the patience we have now as we await the resurrection is not in vain, but just as spring follows winter, we must believe in the resurrection.