Spring & The Tender Heart of God

I saw spring for the first time this year.

I don’t mean that I somehow wasn’t on earth March-June every year of my life until now. I mean that I never saw a real spring before.

If you grew up in a normal place that experienced four seasons a year, you may ask if fake springs are a thing. They are. Perhaps ‘abnormal’ is a better word.

I lived most of my life in a town 8,000 feet above sea-level. Not much grows up yonder besides pine trees and sagebrush, but it sure does snow. Springtime was when you got to say hello to the dirt and sagebrush again. You might get a few aspens budding, some flowers, but it wasn’t explosive in the least.

Until last year, the only other place I’ve lived was a desert. No, all those palm trees are not native to Southern California. Nor is most of the bursting green vegetation you see. If you want to witness SoCal in its natural state, check out Torrey Pines State Reserve outside of Del Mar. It’s pretty. But it’s dry. So springtime in SoCal consisted in non-native trees regaining their leaves, and the immortal, foreign vegetation looking a tad greener than it did after the 50 degree winter.

When I moved to my New-State-Which-Shall-Remain-Unnamed, I realized I would experience real seasons here (technically my little Cali town only had two seasons: winter and fire season). I was especially ecstatic at the idea of living through my first real spring! (I’m a nature nerd, so these sorts of things make me bounce up and down and pump my fist in the air.)

After a very cold winter in which I wasn’t buried in five feet of snow (huzzah!)… spring came.

It was boring.

It was cold. The ground was dull. The trees kinda sorta had buds that weren’t doing anything after a full month.

Oh, and it rained a ton. I love rain. But I never associated it with spring

(Apparently I’m very naïve about what most Americans experience every spring).

Then… one day… TULIPS.

Folks, I’ve never seen a naturally grown tulip in the ground. They are not a thing in small Cali mountain town. Nor do you see them much in SoCal.

The tulips gave me hope that this magical season of spring might finally begin. I kept expecting something explosive. Blossoms and flowers and grass and leaves all at once. But everything seemed so storming stagnant.

Until it wasn’t.

I’ve never seen nature work so fast, except in a snowstorm. Suddenly, there were buds with tiny leaves poking out, so a clump of trees had green mist in its branches when seen from afar. Blossoms exploded on other trees until they looked like cauliflower. A wave of green swept over the dull grass on the golf course. And FLOWERS. Flowers everywhere.

I see now why Easter is in the spring. The world is resurrected.

*photo from unsplash

One of my favorite poems is by Theodore Maynard. It’s called ‘The Holy Spring.’ Look it up. The last stanza goes like this:

“The kiss of Christ has brought to life

The marvel of the sod

Oh, joy has rent its chrysalis

To flash its jewelled wings, and is

A dream of beauty and of bliss

The loveliness of God.”

The loveliness of God! Can anything describe spring better?

The white blossoms on the trees struck me the most. I don’t know what kind of tree they come from. But they lined the streets and the neighborhoods like garlands for a wedding. For who’s wedding?

God and the soul. I’m convinced.

It is as though all these blossoms are bent down with the weight of soft petals so they’re low enough for us to stop and smell their gentle fragrance. Who couldn’t think that God put them there on purpose? As if he thought, “My beloved will walk here this evening. I will bend the boughs a little lower so they will be seen and smelled.”

It is staggering to see all the places these details exist in the spring, as though arranged by an anxious and enthusiastic lover. They are lavish. Extravagant. Generous. The world is bursting with generous love.

But it is so gentle.

If there is a tender season, it is spring. That’s my lasting impression of this time of blossoms and sweet fragrances that creep indoors even if the windows are shut.

And if the effect is tender, will not the cause also be tender?

I have seen God’s grandeur in marbled walls of stone carved by glaciers thousands of years ago. I have seen it in trees twenty feet across, waterfalls a mile above my head, and forests so thick with pines that they are oceans. I have seen it in the expanses of sea so large I feel a speck in comparison. It is awe-inspiring. It is humbling. It creates a wellspring of praise.

But on the other side of this grandeur… I see the tenderness. I have seen it in meadows and small birds and quiet moments wrapped up in prayer. But never in a season. It is like… a sweet-fire wrapping all around you.

What is a sweet-fire? It is hard to describe it without calling it what it is: sweet-fire. I heard it from one of my favorite authors, when his character encountered Christ in the Eucharist. I knew immediately what he was talking about. It is for me that moment at Communion when there is no dryness, but only a feeling of “my burning soul by Thine / caught mystically in a living mesh.” (Theodore Maynard) It is the touch of God and the soul, of God possessing the soul and the soul possessing God as much as possible in this life. Is there any happiness besides that?

But it is not overwhelming like fire and earthquakes on Sinai. It is being overwhelmed by sweetness, by warmth, by something so much deeper than emotion but stirs the emotions anyway. It is sweet-fire.

If the sweet-fire feeling is a season, it is spring. It is the loveliness of God, everywhere, visible, begging us to receive love and to love in return. There is something profoundly nuptial about spring that makes me think of heaven: the wedding feast of the Lamb. It is as though God thins the veil between us and heaven for a little while and asks, “ah, aren’t you excited? Don’t you want to come?”

I do.

I wish spring could stay forever, but as I write this the blossoms are gone, and somehow (I still can’t figure out how), the leaves thickened on the trees and flowers have become a normality rather than a rarity. The world is taking on the lazy, green warmth of summer.

Perhaps there is some revelation of God’s heart here, too?

The world is a book, and like all books, it reveals something of the heart of its author. In Lord of the Rings it is said, “We put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.” The tender, sweet-fire love of God spills out into the details of the world he made and the lives he draws us through; let us seek to find it, and respond with our own love, so we may attend the wedding feast of the Lamb one day.

Blessings,

K.M.