Grace Notes in the Desert

Grace Notes in the Desert is written for the saints of Rio Grande Presbyterian Church and the surrounding community.

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Grace Notes acknowledges we need God's grace and forgivness as much as the desert water.

3/22/2011

Bright as Daffodils?

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Christ said, “whomever believes
in me will never die; and whomever lives and believes in me, though
he die, yet shall he live.”
--John 11: 25-26

Easter comes late this year, the last Sunday of April, while all the crocuses and daffodils bloomed in the heart of March.

For many, Spring is proof of resurrection: small shoots pushing out of once cold frozen earth; green buds bursting forth from every tree and branch whether in the desert or the forest.

Poet T.S. Eliot liked to talk about ‘the eternal present’ in much of his poetry and how, out of the wasteland, life blooms:

“…Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird…
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present
.”

Truth is, in this world, nothing hurts more than death; and there is no one with the power to promise and to give life except…God. Life is a promise God alone makes and God alone keeps. Jesus Christ, like the Red Bud in my garden, is that life of God--of which Eliot wrote and saints of old and new profess--eternally present,here, now, new, now, full, now, abundant, now, blooming, evergreen.

I wonder if we are as alive as a Red Bud or a daffodil? I wonder if we long, or even hope, for the life God promises greener than a tree in bud, more formidable than a flower pushing through the dirt?

In this world, death is all around us; darkness; dis-ease; acts of nature; acts of us: fear and war and trouble; still, to us, God’s promise comes, ever new, ever certain, perennial as a flower.

This Easter, let’s embrace the life God gives and the promise and the hope that’s ours in Jesus Christ…so we, too, might bloom bright as daffodils.

Yours in Christ‘s Service,
A Pastor in the Desert

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