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By Robert Docter
A Prayer in Spring
By Robert Frost
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.
To love the miracles of spring de-complicates life. To avoid revelling in its beauty, pondering its mystery, or finding fascination in its colors deprives us of the gift of simplicity. All too often we join a troop marching hurriedly in lock-step from this to that in the frenzy of imagined importance and ignore the lessons in love showered upon us by a beneficent and creative God. We manufacture worries that wind their way from stomach to brain and back again. These do little more than contort our faces. And once dispelled, we busily go about creating another one. We must enjoy the sleepless exhaustion and stomach pain. Is this the only way we know we are alive?
We have the obligation to fulfill God’s love as he sanctifies it with his magnificent gifts.
We often miss the meaning of love with the self-centered notion that we, alone, are God’s creation. Not true. Humans came far down the line—almost at the end of his creating period. To ignore any element of God’s creation is to live without the fullness of his love. Look around you. Are you isolated in the chill of air-conditioned modernity? Are you surrounded by glass and metal? Is your usual pace called “hurried”? Can you feel the wind or hear a bird celebrate or smell the beauty of life or be touched by a loved one?
No?
For God’s sake—stop!
Go outside and drink in the meaning of love. You’ll find it in the presence and present of God’s gift of nature. We fulfill God’s love for us by loving his creation—all of it, and all of us.
In this hemisphere, Easter always comes in the spring of the year. What a bonus! It comes on the first Sunday after the first new moon after the vernal equinox. It is as if the springtime, with its rebirth and renewal of the world around us brings us a special gift. Plants burst into bloom. Trees bring forth their fruit. Birds sing their melodies of love to one another. The days slowly warm since summer can’t be far behind, and we sing hymns that speak of an empty tomb and a risen Lord.
Edmund Spencer, a British poet who lived in the 16th century saw it and wrote:
Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day,
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin:
And having harrow’d hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win.
So let us love, dear love, like as we ought,
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
Fresh spring, the herald of love’s mighty kind,
In whose coat armour richly are displayed
All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring
In goodly colors gloriously array’d.
Our spirits rise. Hope expands. Beauty bursts around us, and we praise the One who sends us blessings upon blessings in the majesty of springtime.
