On the yonder side of darkness there is light.

While it’s tempting to think of spring as a gentle introit to summer, Mainers know better.  Spring is when our rivers rush and rise. Fish begin the arduous journey toward spawning grounds. Amphibians risk road crossings to reach their vernal pools. Road kill increases exponentially. And do we even want to talk about pot holes and mud ruts?  
 
Christ is risen!
 
We Jesus followers respond with instincts developed over years filled not just with bright daffodils and pastel Easter eggs but also immersed in all the challenges, desperate and mundane, of living in this world:
 
Christ is risen indeed!
 
Out of darkness comes light and into darkness shines light, God persistently not leaving us alone, no matter how hard we push away or try to hide. God drawing us toward fertile possibilities that require dangerous paths or dormant incapacitation way more often than we’d like.  God, coming out…of the grave, of our hearts, of the places we fear most, and rarely according to schedule. 
 
When forced to lie for months in a dark room with bandaged eyes, the great novelist, friend to the poor, Japanese labor reformer, and Jesus follower, Kagawa, said, At the center of things these is a heart.  On the yonder side of darkness there is light. Deprived of sight, I discern that light flooding in through the darkness…. It is not I that believe in God.  It is God who is bringing me to the birth. Here is the purpose back of this wearisome confinement.  I am being born, born of God.  God has some great expectation regarding me.  I must not give way to despair because of pain or sorrow.  God is bearing me in his womb.  (quoted by his friend, William Axling, in “Kagawa” Harper& Brothers 1932  
 
“Comfort” did not originally mean “to make feel better” but to make stronger, Cum Forte!  (I just noticed how much that sounds like the English, “come forth.”) 
 
So, with voices as small and multitudinous as peepers, as show stopping as moose, we proclaim that God is alive and well and with humankind, bearing us in the womb of Christ’s restless, loving Spirit. 
 
I find no necessity, whatever, for pessimism.  
Have I not strength in abundance to lay temptations low? Who says that the flesh has a mighty influence over the spirit? 
            My experience is just the reverse. 
 If I may be allowed a confession in with there is not deceit, I see no need for concealing the fact that I am surprisingly strong.”       -Kagawa. Meditations
 
 
In God’s Grace, Karen