HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Stained Dogwood, Jamestown, NC
Gold leafed Daffodil, Jamestown, NC
Sacremental Tulip Cup, Greensboro, NC

The circularity of life on so many levels has always been intriguing. Certainly one of the most obvious is the circular cycle of the changing seasons. King Solomon, the wisest and richest man who has ever lived, began his personal experience writings in Ecclesiastes stating that “everything is meaningless…the sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north: round and round it goes, ever turning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.” One of the basic tenants of teaching is to tell them once, then tell them again, and tell them one more time. The seasons hurry through their cycle each and every year we successfully cling to the surface of this planet as it completes one more trip around the sun. Do you suppose someone is trying very hard to make a point with us before we are ultimately placed beneath that surface?

Solomon begins chapter three with the observation that “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven”. Summer is the active season for growing; fall is the season for maturing and reaping; winter is the fallow season of dying. But spring, ah spring, is the season of renewal, resurrection, rebirth and hope! The dogwood displays pure white blooms with tinges of nail and blood stains on the outer edges of its petals. The daffodil bows reverently to reveal grace shining through its gold leafed petals. And the deep red tulip lifts its sacramental cup to the heavens in remembrance of the blood shed on a Calvary cross.

All of these miraculous wonders burst into our lives every spring to remind us of the hope for a meaningful life and the hope of rebirth available to all creation because of the cross and resurrection that occurred one spring season over two thousand years ago.