The Promise of Spring, a sermon based on Isaiah 43:15-21, preached by the Rev. Robert Lee Nichols, Jr. at the Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church on May 4, 2008

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts, along with the response of our wills be acceptable unto You this day, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I hate winter.

You do remember winter, don’t you? It’s that long, oppressive season between autumn and springtime when everything turns brown below and gray above and dies, or appears to die. It is particularly offensive in Pittsburgh. That’s why we welcome spring with all our heart. What an incredible spring we’ve had. The green is vivid. Then there is yellow everywhere with the forsythia and daffodils. Now the flowering trees, the tulips. This is the most beautiful place in the world. For three seasons of the year.

But the winter is long. And gray. And hard. It becomes an endurance test, a challenge to survive. I had to chuckle at the Post Gazette this past February. Every day they have a one word summary of the weather and for the umpteenth day in a row they chose this word to characterize Pittsburgh’s winter weather - “gloomy.” At least it is reliable. When the chill winds of October come, you know what lies ahead. There is a certain inevitability about it. The book of Genesis forewarns us, chapter 8, verse 22: As long as the earth endures, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

I come by my distaste for winter naturally. As a school age child I grew up in Jamaica, paradise, where there is no winter. And most of my earlier life and later adult life was spent in various southern locales, where winter lasts a reasonable amount of time and is over by February or March and ends with an explosion of color - azalea and dogwood blooming everywhere.

There are different ways to deal with winter. Some choose to run away, to flee to Florida or South Carolina or Arizona. That’s a course I do not recommend. I’ve been to those places. They pale in comparison to the glory of Pennsylvania.

And there is a benefit to winter. When my son in law a number of years ago took himself, my daughter, and grandchildren to Tucson for a number of years (they are back now here), I told him straight up that having no winter cannot be good for the for their spiritual welfare. This was a ruse, of course, to get them to stay, and it didn’t work. Still, there is some truth there. We all need some winter, if only because then we can truly appreciate the rebirth of the world, the rebirth of our souls. And not just to appreciate it, but to allow it, for winter is necessary for spring. Winter is necessary.

There is a winter of the soul, too, when everything within becomes cold and gray and lifeless, even as there can be a springtime of the soul, there is a winter of the soul.

Sometimes this comes upon us, like an alien invading our body, as with depression or grief or illness or a time of tempting. And we just have to wait it out, with faith and courage and patience.

Sometimes though I believe people take it on by their own will. I think of a rigidity, an anger, a judgmentalness, a joylessness – taken on so strongly that this is what people expect when they encounter us. Anything else is a surprise. There’s plenty of that in Fox Chapel, shall we be honest? Where discontent with the world is taken on as a lifestyle, or discontent with the church, or just discontent with life in general. How terribly sad.

Besides being self indulgent, it is egregious form of unfaithfulness.

On the other hand, optimism is a radical act of faith. Being good natured, hopeful, graceful and optimistic. By that I do not mean adopting some Pollyanna approach to life, where you wear rose colored glasses and refuse to see the dirt and grime, the pain and evil all around. No, I mean to see these things with eyes wide open. And yet to know that God is in charge. God can overcome these. God is working now to overcome them. And, in fact, God has already brought the victory in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. We need to embrace this and make it part of our life. To not trust what the world tell us to believe, but what God tells us to believe:

• That life is good.
• That God is working His purpose out as year succeeds to year.
• That no matter how bad today was, God gives a new day, a new morning comes, that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is His faithfulness.
• That there is reason for hope, for goodness. For optimism.

That spring comes no matter how hard the winter. If we open our hearts to it. We must trust God. And wait patiently. For we ourselves cannot bring it about. Spring comes by the power of God.

We were reminded of that at our most recent Stephen Ministry meeting when one of our members led the devotional. It came from a devotional classic titled, Streams in the Desert by L. B. Cowman and James Reimann. May I read you the entry for April 18.

I once believed that after I prayed, it was my responsibility to do everything in my power to bring about the answer. Yet God taught me a better way and showed me that self-effort, always hinders His work. He also revealed that when I prayed and had confident trust in Him for something, He simply wanted me to wait in an attitude of praise and do only what He told me. Sitting still, doing nothing except trusting in the Lord, causes a feeling of uncertainty, and there is often a tremendous temptation to take the battle into our own hands.

We all know how difficult it is to rescue a drowning person who tries to help his rescuer, and it is equally difficult for the Lord to fight our battles for us when we insist upon trying to fight them ourselves. It is not that God will not but that He cannot, for our interference hinders His work. Spiritual forces cannot work while we are trusting earthly forces.

Often we fail to give God an opportunity to work, not realizing that it takes time for Him to answer prayer. It takes time for God to color a rose or to grow a great oak tree. And it takes time for Him to make bread from wheat fields. He takes the soil, then grinds and softens it. He enriches it and wets it with rain showers and with dew. Then He brings the warmth of life to the small blade of grass, later grows the stalk and the amber grain, and finally provides bread for the hungry.

All this takes time. Therefore we sow the seed, till the ground, and then wait and trust until God’s purpose has been fulfilled. We understand this principle when it comes to planting a field, and we need to learn the same lesson regarding our prayer life. It takes time for God to answer prayer.

I love the words of a song by Ann Hampton Callaway which says much the same thing. It’s called You Can’t Rush Spring, and goes like this:

You can’t rush spring,

No matter how we try.

A bud knows when to bloom; a bird knows when to fly.

Although your eager heart may long to see the blossoms on the cherry tree,

the winter needs her time to say goodbye,

The rose will come, the robin will appear.

And someone with the song you’ve waited long to hear.

There’ll come a morning when the frost will end, and when your

broken heart will mend.

But these are wonders only time can bring.

It’s taken my whole life to learn, to give each single moment its own.

You can’t rush spring.

So, you can’t bring about the soul’s refreshment no matter how much you desire it. But you can be ready. You can be prepared so that when God blows a fresh breeze through your soul you can open the windows and air out what needs to be aired out.

You can’t rush spring. But you can open the shutters and air out the house. You can get outside. You can clean the place up. You can plan the garden and even till it.

You can buy your new clothes for Easter. You can pray. You can hope. You can tidy up the mess inside so that when the new comes there will be a welcoming attitude, a willing host. You can make yourself ready.

As we go to communion I invite you to do that. To think about what that springtime within you might look like and feel like. And think about what needs to happen for you to make the proper preparation.

And I invite you to think about the winds that are blowing through our community.

Some great things are happening. And we ought not ignore them or take them for granted.

Last week our Middle School young people and their parents challenged us to respond to the needs of children in Africa. I, for one, was moved and inspired by their efforts. The spaghetti dinner raised over a thousand dollars. And these young people are still at work

Great things are happening on Sunday morning. Our attendance in worship is up, significantly, for the first time in about 15 years. I looked at the figures this week and if you average total attendance in worship for 2007 and this year, taking out Easter and Christmas (since those are aberrations), our worship attendance is up 20%. Praise be to God.

We’re receiving new members into our fellowship at a greater pace than we have in years.

Our giving is stable. That’s been a struggle for us in recent years. And we’re a little behind of where we should be but our Finance Committee is saying, fear not. We’ll be okay. Y’all help them out now.

Our mission program is going great guns. We are doing great things. We had to cancel our Haiti mission trips this year because of the security situation. This was a disappointment. But what’s going on there only reinforces our strong belief that this is a place where we need to take the gospel. We’re getting geared up for Harvest Fair – the first Saturday in September, mark your calendars. It’s going to be different this year and I think you’ll be excited about what’s being planned. We sent more people to New Orleans this year to help rebuild that city than we ever have before. And they did great work bringing the love of Jesus to folks in desperate straits.

The Lord is doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?

May we perceive it. And welcome it. Both in our church and in our own hearts and souls.

In His name and for His sake. Amen.