The Hope of Spring

A vivid yellow splash of colour under a graffiti-sprayed flyover caught my eyes recently as I was driving to Glasgow. I was driving to an Easter Sunday morning service in Glasgow thinking of the mess and chaos of the world within and without when I noticed the daffodils. There they were, sheltered under the bridge, amongst the traffic, the rubbish, the bottles and the art-work painted on the uprights.

Those daffodils were a timely reminder to me of what it means to be a Christian. We are here in this world, living on a fallen planet, surrounded by chaos and beauty and sin and suffering and righteousness.

Those daffodils made me think of that first resurrection Sunday. Scriptures speak of the need for Jesus to leave heaven, to be born on this earth and to live a perfect life, amidst the pain, the suffering, rejection, ridicule. He was a good man, a good teacher, a prophet, yes, but he was so much more. He was God in the flesh, showing a fallen and degraded mankind the way back to a relationship with a perfect and justly holy God. Jesus was willing to condescend so much that he became one of us - a man who would hunger, hurt, weep and suffer. A man who would heal, comfort, restore and laugh. A man who was willing to get his hands dirty in the mess and humanity of the world. A man who was put to death on a cross. Jesus, although Scriptures tell us he had no beauty that we should esteem him, was beautiful in how he lived that perfect life and how he spoke of the way back to God. He was like those daffodils surrounded by ugliness.

Three days after lying in the grave, Jesus rose from the dead, with the Father's approval that he had paid the penalty for sin, our sin. He had no sin of his own - he did not deserve to die or to suffer in any way and, yet, he chose to suffer in the worst way imaginable. Jesus gladly chose to receive our sin transferred to his unblemished account. And, what did we receive in return? His perfect, spotless righteousness. Righteousness acceptable to God transferred to our overdrawn and bankrupt account.

That is the hope of Easter, that is the power of the resurrection bursting into the darkness of this world! That is our only hope.