Hang in there

It’s November as I write this and we have been going through some changes that began in October. Everywhere, the leaves on the trees have changed colors from green to red, yellow, orange, brown and a few that defy description. It’s a time some consider to be one of the most beautiful times of the year, especially where groves of maple trees are. People used to go for miles to ooh and aah such sights and they would be talked about for weeks and immortalized in pictures and paintings used to compare and judge future occurrences.

These changes signal the changing of the seasons from summer to fall, and in a few weeks, after a little rain and the winds blow, most of those beautifully colored trees will be standing, all their former beauty gone - barren, bleak looking, with only a brown leaf hanging on here and there, twisting in the growing ever cooler wind.

The grass, a lot of it now brown instead of green, is covered some mornings with a carpet of white frost; a precursor showing, that if we’re lucky, in a few weeks the stark bleakness will be broken with enough snow to cover the brown grass with a carpet of white. A carpet that, while beautiful in itself, actually emphasizes the barrenness of the trees it surrounds. (He who has ears, let him hear.)

I have had people tell me they would love to live in a place where the seasons stayed the same all year, then tell me what kind of season that is. Some would like warm all the time with constant temperatures.

Some have told me they would like cold temperatures and others tell me they would be happiest somewhere in between where the temperatures never varied but a few degrees either way. (He who has ears, let him hear.)

There are two times a year that I’m really struck by the similarities between nature, our lives and theChurch - in the spring and in the fall. Spring is easy to figure out with it’s “newness of life” - the excitement of everything warming up, our thoughts turning to spending more time outdoors after being holed up inside from the bitterness of the cold and life starting to spring from the barrenness of winter.

What is often forgotten, or at least played down somewhat, the main reason we become so excited by spring with its newness of life is because of seeing the stark changes that occur the preceding fall and the bleakness and hardness of the winter that follows.

The harder the winter we endure, the greater the excitement at the coming of spring.

Christians often su◊er and endure things they can’t comprehend, much less explain. Only in our country have we so far escaped what is the lot of much of Christianity world wide as Satan tries to destroy the faith that brings eternal life - faith in Jesus.

The Bible itself shows the more severe the persecution, the greater the endurance of the saints.

Ecclesiastical and world history bears this out. The more the world tries to stamp out faith in Christ the stronger it gets. Paul says of this in Romans 8:18: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

In other words, hang in there. It don’t matter how hard the winter, springs acomin’.

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Editor’s note: Charlie Newman is pastor of Avoca Christian Church. To contact him, e-mail [email protected], or write in care of The Times at prtnews@ nwaonline.com or P.O. Box 25, Pea Ridge, AR 72751.