Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

There is a time for everything.

The Bible records this wisdom of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 3, and perhaps you have heard this phrase woven throughout movies, literature and even a 60s pop song.

There is a time for everything. It’s equally profound and provocative.

And it’s great until we’ve been stuck in the house for COVID quarantine or shoveling snow during the winter months. It’s an amazing idea until we’re in a situation which we cannot control, one we hope closes out sooner than the end-in-sight appears.

In these prolonged “winter seasons” where we’re barren, dry, cold and irritated, we can forget about the beauty that lies in life’s natural rhythms.

Just like the signs of spring that waited to appear just a few weeks before Easter — right on time — our relief will also come when it’s ready. Faith in Jesus Christ says we believe winter doesn’t last forever. A new season full of new life is guaranteed. It’s beautiful when it’s in God’s hands and we trust Him.

God won’t let us down.

Just as snowfalls, barren trees and rainfalls have their divine purposes, so does all of the suffering we endure. Is this easy to accept? Not usually — especially when “winter” has gone on much longer than we’d like and we’re cold, tired and weary. But faith tells us to hang in there, our winter seasons won’t last forever. Hope for the new green plants to bud, and for relief to arrive. Be on the lookout, because spring is coming. The days are getting longer, the flowers are beginning to bloom. Culturally, the COVID vaccine is being distributed and there is hope that we might resume some fashion of life as we knew it before the nightmare of 2020.

Easter reminds us that there is a time for everything. A time to die, and a time to live. Jesus experienced those truths as he lived on earth. He lived as we live. He died as we all will unless he returns before that time.

As we look around and mourn those who are no longer with us, those we may not have had a chance to say goodbye to because of COVID restrictions, may we remember that they are now experiencing the promise Jesus gave us. That he came because God loves us. Jesus lived, taught, died and was buried.

But followers of Jesus have the strongest conviction that Jesus did not stay dead. Death didn’t keep Jesus in the grave. Jesus arose from the tomb. And because of that miracle of life, Jesus assures us that he was just the first to do so. All of us will experience life, death, and because of Jesus, life everlasting is possible. John 3:16 tells us this truth.

May God, the Father, soften our hardened hearts in the places we’ve lost hope and help us persevere, trusting that signs of spring and new blessings will appear.

REV. JOHN MOXLEY can be reached at Jmoxleydillwyn@ gmail.com.