A Beautiful Season
Aren’t you glad you don’t live in the tropics? I mean, who wants to live where it’s 85 and humid every day? (Except in the rainy season, when it’s 85 and very humid every day.) Nope. We are Buffalo proud, right? We live here because we love all four seasons – and right now is an early spring season complete with the mowing of grass, the opening of leaves, the hatching of baby birds. Love is in the air! It’s a beautiful season.
But not all seasons are beautiful (and here I’m not talking about endless tropical rain). Speaking personally, I just came through a season – a cancer season – that caused quite a scare. This was a season nobody in their right mind wants to go through. As you know, cancer brings anxiety, depression, denial, frustration, fatigue, pain, anger and fear. As if life wasn’t hard enough already! Cancer, literally, shows us the plain fact that we are mortal, and that our season of life is short. In my case, thanks be to God and to good medical care, I am currently in a season of “no sign of disease.” But that hasn’t brought me out of the season of mortality. We’re all in that season.
We’re all in that season, but we aren’t just in that season. Another season is dawning. A season of immortality that overtakes the season of mortality. What in the world am I talking about? To borrow an idea from The Chronicles of Narnia, it isn’t “always winter and never Christmas” on this pale blue dot anymore. Christmas has come, and Easter has come. Okay…so what? The Christian story of everything tells us that God has truly come in Jesus, as a man, to bring His reign back to Earth. Can you wrap your mind around that? God took on human flesh!? And if the story of Christmas is unfathomable, try Easter. An event happened to and by this Jesus that forever breaks our season of mortality. This event is that Jesus died. And, he came back to life. Did you catch that? A dead man rose from the endless season of mortality and ushers in the season of immortality!
If you’ve read this far you might strongly agree. Or, you might have your doubts and strongly disagree, like the scientist and atheist apologist Richard Dawkins, who said this: “Presumably what happened to Jesus was what happens to all of us when we die. We decompose. Accounts of Jesus's resurrection and ascension are about as well-documented as Jack and the Beanstalk.” No offense to Richard (or Jack), but I kindly beg to differ. For one who is curious whether a new season is dawning, there is more than enough evidence.
For instance, without the resurrection there is a major scene missing in the history of the world. Something is needed to explain how the message of the risen Jesus spread so fast across every boundary. How did a handful of scattered Jews and converts accomplish so much so fast? Many of the witnesses of this event were willing to die (and you wouldn’t die for what you know is a lie). If it would help you to have the event well-documented, at last count there are about 66,000 ancient documents (leaving Jack in the bean dust). These documents ring true: they record embarrassing episodes of its leaders and resurrection reports to women, who (in those days) were not considered reliable witnesses. The four Gospels grapple to explain a resurrection explosion (so to speak), and they don’t read like a conspiracy. I could go on. And you should too. The resurrection of Jesus is more than a historical event with plenty of evidence for a wonderer; it is like spring-time, a beautiful season of falling in love. Or rather, it is a coming to see that there is Another in an eternal season of love with us.
- Originally published on April 21, 2021 in the Clarence Bee
Image: “Field of Spring Wheat at Sunrise” by Vincent Van Gogh; public domain