Springtime in God’s World

George MacDonald is one of my favorite authors, whose works i was first introduced to by my counselor. He was a Scottish poet, author, minister, who lived in the 1800’s, and made major advances in the world of fantasy literature. Both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis felt him a significant inspiration in their own growth and development as writers. Here’s a short reflection on Spring reflecting God’s nature.

“I walked home one winer’s Sunday morning after church. It was a lovely day. The sun shone so warm that you could not help thinking of what God would be able to do before long—draw primroses and buttercups out of the earth by force of sweet persuasive influences. But in the shadows lay fine webs of laces of ice, so delicately lovely that one could not but be glad of the cold that has made the water able to please itself by taking such graceful forms.

Again I wondered over again for the hundredth time, what … always kept it beautiful? The beauty of holiness must be at the heart of it somehow, I thought. Because our God is so free from stain, so loving, so unselfish, so good, so altogether what he wants us to be, therefore all his works declare him in beauty; his fingers can touch nothing but to shape it into loveliness; and even the play of his elements is in grace and tenderness of form.

And then I thought how the sun, at the farthest point from us, had begun to come back toward us, looked upon us with a hopeful smile, and was like the Lord when he visited his people as a little one of themselves, to grow upon the earth until it should blossom as the rose in the light of his presence.

“Ah Lord,” I said in my heart, “draw near to your people. It is springtime with your world, but yet we have cold winds and bitter hail, and pinched voices forbidding them that follow you and not follow with us. Draw nearer, Sun of Righteousness, and make the tress burgeon, and the flowers blossom, and the voices grow mellow and glad, so that all shall join in praising you, and find that harmony is better than unison…”

Read it slowly and soak it in!