There is something about spring that renews my hope. It reminds me that God knows exactly what He is doing.
I love the first bits of green that begin popping up after a long winter; it reminds me that just like the season of winter, Jesus was placed in a tomb. Just like the season of fall that leads into winter, there was death and darkness in the story of Jesus. Jesus experienced sadness and wept before He was raised. There was a dark season before the warm joys of Easter.
How many times in our lives do we want to skip over winter and go right into the warmth and renewed hope of spring? If you don’t endure the colder days, you don’t appreciate the warmth when it finally comes.
I love making a cup of coffee and walking in our gardens to see the green making its way up through the dead foliage of last year. I love all the bulbs I planted in the fall sprouting up and turning into a sea of color after a drab and gray winter. When I plant my bulbs in the fall, I tell myself this will be worth it in the spring even though I cannot tell as I’m doing it. This is true for so many things in life.
My favorite literary character of all time is Dickon from The Secret Garden. Dickon Sowerby is a little boy who grows up poor and lives in a little cottage on a moor in England with his many siblings. They didn’t have much, but they had each other, and his friends were the animals on the moor. Dickon soon meets Mary and Colin and teaches them how to heal themselves through his relationship with nature. Dickon teaches Mary and Colin how to tend to a garden, and a place that was once locked away for 10 years becomes the place where Mary and Colin learn how to be children. In many ways, Mary and Colin were both reborn in that very garden.
Photo provided by Megan Rathz
It is in this garden they develop an imagination all from a little common boy who grew up friends with birds and squirrels. Dickon teaches Mary and Colin how to clear the dead debris of winter in the garden. Flowers and roses that look dead at first glance are filled with life. The two children are amazed at Dickon and believe him to be some sort of fairy boy with magic because of the relationship he has with nature. Dickon often refers to the happenings in the garden as magic. There is an unassuming innocence to his character that I cherish and hope for my own children and myself.
The birth of spring is truly remarkable. You don’t get to experience the season of spring before you’ve gone through winter. You don’t get to experience Easter without Lent. Life doesn’t let us fast forward to the parts we enjoy, and press pause to make it last longer, but we can appreciate something from every season.
This is a season of rebirth. The season of Easter represents new life and reminds all of us that after the tomb of winter, the stone will be rolled away. Just as He rose on the third day, the green bits will pop up and make themselves known. May we all have a spark of Dickon in our hearts and relish the magic of this season. Nature is speaking to us. Are we listening?
Megan Rathz is a wife, mother, and teacher. She says everything she has ever learned in life came from her Master Gardener mother.