Winter Is Over, Springtime Has Come

When the lion said—but I don’t know if it spoke—‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is fun to see it coming away.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund…. “Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was, lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. You’d think me simply phony if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they’ve no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian’s, but I was so glad to see them.”
~ CS Lewis, From The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The voice of my beloved! Behold, He comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, there He stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, My love, My beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, My love, My beautiful one, and come away. O My dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff, let Me see your face, let Me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely. Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.” My Beloved is mine, and I am His; He grazes among the lilies. Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn, My beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on cleft mountains.
~ Jesus’ Love for us, and ours for Him, in The Song of Songs 2

Oh beloved, it is true. Each of us who have found Him goes through a crisis of belief. It is desperately hard for us to believe just how radically saved we are. We know that we have been saved from the pits of hell. We know that we have been saved towards a wonderful future. But the battleground
is the life we are in right now.

We think about our past. We feel the shame. We cover with self-righteous coatings of retelling the past. We try to ignore the pain that was inflicted on us. We struggle with the memories and how people saw us in our life. Around us were always people that were prettier or smarter or getting away with things they should not have. And even the things we earned, were sometimes taken away from us.

Relationships into which we entered could not be fulfilled. Or the ones that we consummated only seemed to make things even worse. And the successes we accomplished really did not bring the satisfaction that we thought they would.

In short, our past is so full of pain, that it is sometimes difficult to live in the now.

And so, as we enter into new relationships with people, and with G_d, we find that it is hard to break out of the icy cold feeling that we are going to be let down once again. It has been the norm in our life to be let down and even betrayed.

So, it seems normal to hunker down in a fear-lined bunker, keep people out – and if they try to enter in – to angrily let them know that we don’t like. Oh, the outside of the bunker looks smooth and inviting enough to others… We have made it look that way.

But then, we come to the crisis.

We are sensing that things could be different. We want them to different. We want relationship. But our hands and heart and mind are frozen and cold. Our souls feel as if they entrapped in a winter that has no end. We believe that there will be a dawning Spring, but that it will not be in this life.

But G_d…

Somehow, someway, the pain of staying in such a cold place outweighs our fears. We look to Him and we somehow, someway whisper or scream or dream a prayer: Help me Father! And He does. Sometimes the pain following the prayer is even worse and more intense. But now, it is pain that feels like the dressing of a wound, or the lancing of some horrible boil.

Sometimes it is slow. But gain traction we do as ice around us melts into the beginning of Spring. We are still wet and cold and shaking. But there is more happening than just the melting of the ice. His Presence is something we begin to see and feel as something much more than just comfort down in the bunker of our former angst (yes, He was with us there too).

Then it happens.

We look out at a person (a friend, a spouse, a coworker) that He has put into our lives, and the oddest sensation emerges. Where once we had felt threatened as this person had tried to enter our protective cave and bunker – and had lashed out angrily at them to leave us alone – we now see them for who they really are: His.

And in seeing the person in front of us as His, we find that we can cast aside the fear and take the first steps into what He has purposed all along. We begin to enter into fellowship with others. Not just proximity and kind words – actual fellowship. And in this fellowship, something profound happens.

Can we see it? As we allow our souls to actually intermingle with Him and others, the heat we all make combines into a warmth that not only melts the old ice, but fosters intense growth in all areas of our life… and as the life in us buds and grows and shoots “leaves,” the Light of His Presence begins to actually feed us and give us strength and happiness we never thought possible.

We are finding that Love really is the most powerful thing in the universe.

So, are you in the icy bunker of your fears? Are you afraid to emerge? Are you afraid to let people in? There is a solution. And it is painful. But there is only One Answer. Tonight is your night. Time to call for Help. He is not far away and He is ready to bring Springtime to your life as well.