Pastor’s Blog – April 2011

As the Easter festival approaches we look forward to the familiar sights that point us toward deep, unfathomable mysteries of our faith. The lily, the tulip, and maybe other early blooming spring flowers will be gracing sanctuaries across the globe with their beauty and fragrance, heralding the good news of resurrection, providing a visual declaration of the victory of life as we join to shout the glad proclamation, “The Lord is risen indeed!”

Of course, here at Warwick Central, we are privileged to co-exist with a far more enduring message of life in the form of our incredible bamboo garden, which graces the side driveway and rear of parking lot. Now, I suppose you might, at this point be pondering my sanity (as if you’re the first!), certainly my sense of practicality, as I allude to this persistent growth of shoots and leaves with anything other than annoyance or grim determination to wipe it out once and for all. Well, when you have cut down and bulldozed away, poisoned, cursed, and tried any other and all ways of defeating this plant, only to have it back in your face each spring, maybe it’s time for some healthy respect, or at least a lesson learned about the incredible force of life.

Yes, our bamboo dilemma speaks volumes about the Easter message of life’s victory in the face of attempts to destroy it. It helps to put us in touch with our lack of control in issues of life and death. Although our medical and ethic-espousing communities ponder and work towards longer, healthier life, with visions of sustaining it for longer periods, we never escape from the reality of God’s decree that for only so many years shall we live on this side of eternity. But we are pointed to a deeper reality by so much of what God has created for in our midst. Indeed, our crocus, tree buds and even our bamboo spring back with life, echoing the words of scripture, “Where, O grave is thy victory? Where O death is thy sting?”

I am reminded of a story told by Gloria Gaither in her book, Fully Alive. She related how the back lot of her office, in order to make a parking lot, had been dug out, filled with coarse rocks, pea stone, and gravel, rolled with heavy equipment, then covered in inches of hot asphalt, and rolled many more times until hard and permanent. In her own words:

Up through the sand, up through the gravel, up through the rocks, up from the
darkness and through the thick later of asphalt had pushed a green shoot. It wasn’t
tough, it wasn’t sharp, it wasn’t strong. Any child could have plucked it up with
nearly no effort at all. But it was alive! And there it stood, bright green in the sunlight,
boasting to the world of its photosynthetic miracle: life wins!”

LIFE WINS! This is what Easter is all about. When we are perplexed and distressed, when we wonder how in the world we can face a future, and are uncertain about how our children will fare in years to come, when we begin to loose sight of hope for the future, remember that God has had the final say, won the supreme victory, and abolished our greatest foe. God’s Spirit offers us lives of power and purpose. “He is Risen Indeed!” This means everything! This is why we sing:

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow
Because He lives, all fear is gone
Because I know He holds the future
And life is worth the living just because He Lives

May this Easter observance bring to you a renewal of hope and confidence that, in your life, He does indeed hold the future. And may the blooming of the flowers, trees, and yes, the bamboo, point beyond their own beauty to the even deeper beauty of the truth that God has decreed, “Life Wins”.

Blessings to you,
Pastor John