Good Friday: Gardening in the Snow
It is April 6, Good Friday 2012, and it is snowing outside. I am watering the small pepper and tomato plants that have just managed to peek their newborn heads up out of the soil. It seems incongruous—somehow not right—to nurture new life on the day we commemorate the sacrifice and death of the Savior. And it is really snowing outside. It is just plain counterintuitive to put effort into raising up new life on a day of loss—such suffering, pain and death. It is also counterintuitive to plant and water in a snowstorm. I know, of co urse, that life follows a cycle of seasons. There are seasons of building up a new idea and out of a growing sense of visions and conviction; seasons for watching as all the potential moves toward great fruitfulness—and doing the weeding and pruning necessary for even greater fruitfulness; seasons for harvesting and celebrating the plenty; and seasons for watching the old plants wither and fade away. I hate the season of death. Maybe