The Seasons Turn. Life Turns. God Grant Us Faith In The Turn.

“I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does.”--from “Anne of Green Gables” by L.M. Montgomery

Spring comes. It absolutely does. It always does. But it takes its time too.

I’m just finishing up my yearly trip to central Minnesota in the spring, a visit to the Collegeville Institute, a writing, research and retreat center on the campus of the Benedictine Saint John’s University in Collegeville. I always enjoy my time here, in part, because of how different it is in this part of the world, from my part of the world.

Geographically. The landscape is so flat here! Culturally. Why are these people so darn nice all the time? Gastronomically. Of course there are tater tots on the menu! And definitely, meteorologically. Has it stopped snowing yet!?

You see this corner of God’s creation is as far north as Montreal, so even as back home in southern New England we’ve been reveling in the daffodils and balmy temperatures for weeks, folks in these parts are just making the turn.

The Turn.

That’s the day or days when Minnesotans know that winter has finally turned, and that spring is here. The earth has turned. Life has turned. The world here has turned away from the chill and towards the sun.

Yes, spring’s arrival might be slow or tentative. The day I arrived here a little more than a week ago, seven days into May, the trees, and bushes out back behind my little apartment were almost bare, with the tiniest of little green buds, still not blossoming. Now, just eight days later, those buds have popped, awakened, burst forth, opened up, exploded, all signaling that yes, old man winter is finally retired.

At least for this year.

Because while we in the Boston area had that most wimpy of winter wonderlands (try 11.4 inches, our lowest total in 50 years) Minnesota got whacked by winter. Try 86 inches here in Collegeville (2^nd most ever in 100 years), 90.3 inches in Minneapolis (3^rd most) and Duluth at 139 inches, the most ever recorded since snowfall records have been kept.

That’s a lot of snow. 

That’s why people here are so happy, joyful, even giddy (a term not often used for Midwesterners) at this turn of the seasons.  I imagine that just weeks ago, it might have been tempting for residents of the north star state to wonder if winter was really ever going to end. If life would ever turn. Go from cold to warm, dark to light, and buried to liberated.

That’s not just a temptation for people who so much want one season to end and another to finally begin. It’s also a temptation for all humans, for we who can easily wonder during a difficult season of life that we find ourselves living within…is this ever going to end? Is this ever going to turn? Will spring ever come back to me and my soul?

When someone we love has died and we wonder if this harshness of grief will ever lessen, if the pain will ever soften. When a relationship has ended and our feelings around it are still so raw, so hurt.  When ill health keeps us down and taxes our bodies and makes us weary. When the kids won’t stop bickering and my job feels so mind numbing and the politics in our country are so toxic and, and, and.

It’s almost easier to fatalistically think none of these realities will ever turn.  That life will just keep on being stuck. Buried in a way. The harder thing is to instead trust and believe that the seasons will one day soon change, and the snow will melt, and the buds will bloom, and the flowers will come alive, and yes, life will be renewed.

Things will turn. “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”  We are told of this spiritual wisdom by the author of book of Ecclesiastes.  That if we wait, that if we trust in the surety of the seasons, that if we look for God’s good in all seasons, that if we have courageous faith enough, life does turn.  It turns.

And if the circumstances do not turn, well, then God willing, and God inspiring, how we are dealing with those challenges will turn. We’ll somehow be stronger. We’ll ask for help. We’ll dare to look for the good in the midst of the bad. We’ll pray and pray again. Maybe we’ll just hang on, hang on, with all we’ve got, until spring arrives. 

The Turn. It comes. Thank God, it does come. Not necessarily in our human time of understanding and not always on our schedules but the seasons—they do turn. They turn under the mysterious sway and the faithful watchfulness of God. Our God of the seasons.

Yes. Life turns.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.