“If Winter Comes, Can Spring Be Far Behind?” by Lisa Shoemaker

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” This somewhat famous last line from the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” is one I used to continually quote about this time of year, primarily for its literal sense. Winter is harsh, long, and drab; most of us are longing for color, for warmth, and for budding new life. Spring is the harbinger of newness and another reminder of life’s cyclical nature.

As a former teacher of the literary arts, I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that Shelley was also looking at winter as a metaphor for death, for dark times in our lives, and for a sense of foreboding about the future. This season, however, is the time for hope.

Hope is a subject covered widely in scriptures. The very basis of our devotion to the Christ is our fervent hope in the eternal, in that which is better and beyond the claws of death. Thankfully, nature provides us with spring as the ultimate experience of hope: the temperatures will gradually warm again; the tulips will once again push their way out of the earth; babies will be born, and color will return to the trees and grass. It has always been this way. It will be again.

The early Christians needed to hear messages of hope in their darkest hours of persecution, of poverty, of death, and of . . . well, hopelessness. We serve the “God of hope” (Romans 15:13 NLT), and February, the month before the vernal equinox, is the time that we begin to muster hope for better weather, better choice-making, better life circumstances, better health, better or new relationships. You get the idea. Hope allows us to go at life with a sense of vigor. It gives us the strength we need to push forward. The winters of our lives do not last forever; thankfully, they are cyclical, just as the seasons of nature illustrate for us.

Coincidentally, my elder daughter celebrates her 40th birthday this weekend. I can remember that I banked a great deal of hope on her healthy birth back in 1980. Nothing can scream the newness of spring like the birth of a baby. That hope kept Jim and I looking beyond the particularly harsh winter that year (she was born on a day of ice and sleet) to something fresh, new, and full of promise. She did not disappoint.

So, for those of you who are tired of curling up under blankets, eating hearty soups, shoveling snow, treading ice, and fighting dry skin, take heart. The season of hope is upon us.