New Life

Magnolias are probably my all-time favorite flowering trees.  Maybe it's because they are the among the first to bloom each spring...bravely unfolding beautiful pink when everything else surrounding is brown and dull and dead-like.  

Unfortunately, they are also among the most fragile flowers, and that very thing that makes them so eagerly welcomed at the beginning of spring is also very often that which leads to an early death.

We've had an absolutely gorgeous spring here in Pittsburgh this year...everything began blooming around the middle of March, which is several weeks earlier than usual.  But we were holding our breath for that inevitable cold night, hoping that we would have at least a few days to enjoy the colors before the frost destroyed them.  I'm so thankful I ran outside with my camera to take some pictures of our magnolias when I did, because we had a hard frost shortly after, and that was the end of their flowers.  

But, not by any means the end of the life of the tree.  In this week leading up to Easter, I've been wondering what the disciples of Jesus must have been thinking during that whole week.  What an incredible roller-coaster of emotions!  From the heights of excitement to the depths of despair, and from the depths of despair to hesitant, glorious wonder and amazement.  From Palm Sunday, to Passover and the crucifixion, to Resurrection Sunday, and the realization that this Jesus was exactly Who He proclaimed to be.

More and more, I'm beginning to understand that God's ways are not our ways.  We like to think sometimes that we have Him figured out...fit into our little "boxes" that we can understand.  But what is the sense in a seemingly untimely death?  Jesus was at the height of His ministry - everyone was ready to make Him the King in Jerusalem - He could have had anything and everything He wanted.  

But He choose death.  Cruel, agonizing, painful death.

Do you ever wonder why?  I mean, He is God - He could have designed the redemption plan differently.  He could wipe out the enemy with a single word.  But He didn't.

I don't know the answer to that, and I'm not going to pretend to know.  I just know that a God that would become flesh and die for me is a God that loves me more than I'll ever understand here on earth...and He is a God that can't and won't be fit into my limited understanding of reality.  His ways are not my ways, and His thoughts are so far beyond mine (Isaiah 55:8).  

For Him, death meant life.  Not life as it looked before - those three years the disciples spent with Jesus were over, and life never really went back to the way it had been before His death.  But His death meant new life...a better life.  Because of what He did on the cross for us, we now can have new life in Him.

"We were buried therefore with Christ by baptism into death, in order that, just as He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in {newness of life}." Romans 6:4