April. This month means spring. New life. Growth.
I didn’t understand the drama of spring time until I visited parts of our country with long, bleak winters.
Where I grew up, winter was wet and green, fading to a gradual hot and brown with the summer sun. But for many places it is just the opposite - the bleakness of winter, complete with dreary colors, blossoms into a palette of color with spring flowers, green grass, and budding trees.
Emerging beauty. Change with hope written through it.
Another word could be redemption. It is interesting that two great world religions, Judaism and Christianity, celebrate holy days in the spring, this year both in April (often religious holy days follow a lunar month, so the days don’t always coincide with our solar calendar).

Passover and Easter are those holy days, and both speak clearly of redemption. Being bought back is the actual idea of redemption.
Like the transformation of the cold, sullen earth into a verdant and life-giving setting, so our lives can experience redemption. In the Bible, God calls to us to ‘be reconciled,’ to come into relationship because of the amazing acts of redemption carried out on our behalf.

Think of the drama of the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea, freed from slavery in Egypt, and brought to a Promised Land. Think of Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the tomb for the sins of the world. Redemption on a scale we can scarcely envision.

So, can we see the coming ’spring’ in those around us who are still showing the effects of winter in their lives?

The unappreciative child. The harsh boss. The uncaring co-worker. The obstinate client. The list could go much longer.

Spring is here! Redemption is here! Faith teaches this, and our lives need it.

It starts with being reconciled to God … and reconciliation with others will follow. When we have been forgiven, we are free to forgive.

Corrie ten Boom, a watchmaker in the Netherlands, hid Jews from the Nazis during World War II with her family in their home. The book and movie, ‘The Hiding Place’ portrays this family’s courageous act of love.

Corrie and her family were discovered and sent to concentration camps, enduring suffering beyond belief. Of her family in the camps, only Corrie survived. Later, when she thought she had forgiven she struggled with disturbing thoughts.

It is told that a kindly Lutheran pastor helped her by describing the bell that was rung in his church. When the bell ringer lets go of the rope, he noted, the bell continues to ring … for a while. The ‘ding-dong’ sounds become more and more faint and then finally stop altogether.

This is like our thoughts when we have forgiven others: in forgiveness we have let go, but our minds will pick up on little things and the thoughts trouble us … for a while. Like the diminishing sounds of a church bell no longer being rung, so our disturbing thoughts will depart in time. We have let go. There is redemption.

Look at the difficult people in your life through the lens of God’s redemptive work; if necessary, ‘let go of the rope’ and see if they look different.
I think they will.

Tags: April, Easter, God, let go, Passover, redemption, resurrection, spring, story, transformation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Life Lessons, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.