“April Showers Bring May Flowers”
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia! I often equate Easter with springtime…The promise of new life… Although, this “spring” doesn’t seem to have appeared yet!
At Caribou Coffee, we have a chalkboard called “Chalk Thoughts,” where we pose a question, and customers can write their thoughts in chalk. Right now, the question is, “Spring showers bring May…?” Someone wrote “Perfect running conditions”. I wonder who that would’ve been?
This winter has been harsh on my running, with the cold and snow. In some ways, I’ve allowed it to get the best of me. Then, I remember a quote that a running page on Facebook posted: “If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done.” As the church, are we waiting for perfect conditions to be the church?
“Perfect” is something that we are never going to attain. Conditions will never be perfect. ALL the time is the right time to be the church. Realizing that the weather is never going to be perfect for running, I recently participated in a 7K. Roads were snowy and slippery. The wind was cold. But, I faced winter head-on.
Then, early in the race, that’s when it happened. I slipped and fell. It only takes a second, and there you are, on the ground. I could hear people behind me gasp.
What did I do? I got back up and continued the race. I also thought of Finding Nemo and the “Just keep swimming” line…Just keep running…
Not my best race. Not my fastest race. But I kept going. I wasn’t going to wait for perfect conditions. Nothing was going to separate me from an activity that I love. Nothing was going to keep me from crossing the finish line.
For some reason, I thought of Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (NRSV).
How many times do we fall down in life? But God is there, picks us up, dusts us off, and continues the journey with us. We are still God’s children. We will keep falling, but NOTHING is able to separate us from the love of God. NOTHING.
When you fall down, do you feel like giving up? I urge you to trust God. When we place our fears and worries in God’s hands, it frees our hands to be as Christ to each other, and help others up when they fall. Embrace them when they are hurt. Welcome them when they are outcast.
This April, are you going to wait for perfect conditions? Or will you get up and shower God’s love on people thirsting to bloom?
May you be blessed as you are a blessing, Caroline