Ark Valley News - Hope and hilarity

Hope and hilarity
By Chuck Terrill
Last Updated: October 12, 2017

Fall is here

If the seasons teach us anything, it is that death does not have the last word.

In the fullness of time, it will be spring again. Life will burst forth, just as Christ burst from the tomb.

Farmers and gardeners understand the seasons, the ebb and flow of the weather, the time to plant and the time to harvest.

Yet beyond the bounds of the regularity and security that the seasons provide, there lingers a brooding understanding. We understand that within the cycles and rhythms of creation, we are locked into the cycle of life and death. The cycle of life and death is the most certain thing in the world; the certainty that children are born and are given life, and just as certainly we all will die and pass from this existence.

It's in Jesus Christ that we find God's answer to the sufferings and decay of the world. We look to God, and we see him, hanging naked from a cross, a victim of what the world ultimately offers.

But the story doesn't end there. Time goes by, three days and two nights to be precise, and God answers our cries. For out of the cold and bleak darkness of death, there is the promise of a blooming, a transformation, a resurrection.

God's answer to our cries isn't to turn back the clock, to rewind through the seasons of life, to restore life for a little while longer. Rather God promises that as the clock continues, as the seasons continue on their course, there will one day be a restoration of the full goodness of the creation.

Death and decay are going to be overturned. There will be a resurrected transformation, at which time we will be reunited with loved ones who have died. The four seasons will end. We will be in a new season, an eternal season of health, love and life.

We are promised that in the fullness of time we will be reunited, assured of a time when grief will be transformed to joy, when despair will change to hope, when out of death will come life.

If the seasons teach us anything, it is that death does not have the last word.

In the fullness of time it will be spiritual spring again. Life will burst forth, just as Christ burst from the tomb.

Chuck Terrill is pastor of Valley Center Christian Church. Reach him at chuck@vcchristian.church or at 755-1233.