ready to be awoken

There's something magical about spring.  It begets from the unnaturalness of it.  No one looks at a young babe and finds it odd when he ages.  When a child graduates from its mother's breast to solids, he is applauded and encouraged.  When a teenage girl grows hips and becomes soft, she is looked on as a woman.  When a mother becomes a grandmother... all these things are natural and orderly.  Such is spring to summer, summer to autumn, autumn to winter.

But winter to spring?  It is as unnatural as life from death.  Every winter, I am tricked.  Color is gone.  Warmth has abandoned me.  Life is no more.  And then, one mystical day, spring bursts forth.  The perennials laugh, as their green buds boast of new life, "You thought me dead!  But I was only sleeping."

And such it is with Christ.  He is the True Spring of life.  Even as he said to the mourning crowd, right before He raised Jairus' daughter to life, "Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping."  He proves to us that He is able to raise our sleeping hearts to life.  You may find yourself, as I often do, wondering if your heart is so very dead.  Have I backslid so very far and forgotten my First Love so much that my heart is dead and colorless?  No, He says, you are only sleeping.  And He is able to wake you from that slumber.  Do you see the spring all around, reminding you?

The Giver of life, it is He who clothes His creation in splendor - the flowers and the hearts of His beloved, both.  The horror and expected death will inevitably come - in winter and in life.  But, there is a true spring coming.  The world evidences a glimpse of it annually; the believer experiences the grace daily.  And yet there is more to come!

"Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping."

And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead.

But taking her by the hand he called, saying,

"Child, arise."

And her spirit returned, and she got up at once.