Like many of us I’ve been enjoying the warmer days and the new life filling our gardens with fragrance and colour. It’s awesome to see the barren winter ground transformed and to me it is a sign that God is constantly at work bringing regeneration and new hope. I sense that someone feels very stuck today and can hardly believe that things will ever change for you, but Jesus is saying, ‘Don’t be afraid. I am at work even now to make things new in your life. I am the one who sets the captives free and I am the resurrection and the life. I came to take your ashes and to bring beauty to birth in your life instead. Death became glorious life, as I rose from the grave. You feel under attack, but I overcame the devil and all his schemes and in me is all power to set you free. Trust me dear one, because I love you with an everlasting love and nothing can snatch you out of my hand.’
As I reflected on those amazing words I was reminded of the passage in the Song of Solomon (2:10-11) My beloved spoke and said to me,‘Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth, the season of singing has come.’
Through Solomon’s prophetic words, God is asking us to have hope that even now he is bringing that new life into being. He calls you beautiful and in the most tender language, says that you are His beautiful one. Maybe you’ve never been called beautiful or never had that sense of how important you are to someone? As a child I was told constantly that I was ugly and a mistake. It numbed my sense of self and made me wish I’d been born a different person. I will never forget when the Lord dropped a whisper in my heart as a new Christian, that I was more beautiful to Him than all the majesty of creation. That word stunned me and still does today. It gave me a new foundation on which to build my life and God helps me even today to keep growing in that truth.
He is asking you today to arise from your place of ‘winter’ and to know that springtime is here, the dawn of hope, of joy and worship. Know that you are his forever and take hold of the love and hope he is offering you. The season of singing has come!
