A friend of mine…

Last year I think I wrote a post about how Cambridge can be really nice for a couple of days in March, just enough to make you think Spring has arrived, but then it turns cold again and laughs in your face for thinking it was going to get warm. I called this the Fake Out, and I think it’s happening again.

This year’s winter hasn’t been nearly as bad as last year’s, but, nonetheless, I’m still desperately looking forward to sunshine and warmer weather. Well, in the past few days, we’ve had a glimpse of the sunshine and it warmed up enough so that if you were standing with your face in direct sunlight, it was just warm enough to be pleasant. Alas, these times don’t last long, and it soon grows colder and gray again… but I know that these times will get more and more frequent until, finally, summer arrives.

When you live in a place like Cambridge, it’s hard not to draw analogies between life and the seasons, between the “long, cold death that the Winter brings, and the sweet resurrection, Spring” (see this blog post).  Somehow, the darker, colder winter makes the resurrection of Spring sweeter. The truth that the seasons illustrate is a deep truth, going well beyond the lengthening days and warmer temperatures… the truth is that death is not the end. The reality is that sometimes, when you’re in the middle of winter, death feels like the end.

A couple of weeks ago a seminary friend of mine named Clint was murdered. I absolutely hate writing those words; they ring with such finality. Clint was a pastor of a church in Arlington, TX, and he and his assistant were both attacked in the church, and Clint was killed (last I heard, his assistant, Judy, was still in critical condition). He was only 28. He was the kindest, most compassionate guy you’d ever meet, and all he wanted to do was serve the Lord and help people.

It is senseless… a brutal end to a good life.

Sometimes I wonder if the truth of resurrection is deep enough for this kind of tragedy. The darker the death of Winter, the sweeter the resurrection of Spring… by that measure, on That Day, Clint’s resurrection will be about as sweet as it gets.