Rejoice! God Loves You!

March is the month of transition from winter to spring, the month for planning and preparing outdoor activities. March is a pick-me-up time of year with its little surprises and gifts of nature that appear on scene, but for only a short time. Here in South Texas it’s beautiful wildflowers by the zillions that pop out of the ground working their way northward as the cold weather retreats and the ground warms up at the end of winter. Where I grew up in the northeast, although there may still be a few unyielding patches of  snow lingering around, spirits were always lifted with the perennial appearances of all but forgotten, forever faithful, multi-colored, irises and tulips, waking up in the wet warming ground to decorate the landscape and announce the advent of spring. Our wish is to keep the beauty all year long, but alas, they’re too tender to survive the heat of summer so they recoil to a dormant state, just out of sight, until conditions are right again to lift the spirit.

[Philippians 4: 4-9] You can’t have a rainbow without the rain is the old saying. But is it true? I guess it depends on where you’re at. If you’re talking about life on Earth, the saying definitely holds water. Cloudy days and storms are the norm in mankind’s life. Rich, poor, man, woman, young, old, red, yellow, black or white – no one is exempt from heartache, pain, disaster, disappointment or death. Physical conditions and resources may limit the detrimental experiences that we face, but no earthly condition in and of themselves exempts us from all the trials of life. So the idea of not being able to have a rainbow without the rain reminds us that grief is inevitable, but grief can cause us to look at the blessings of life in a brighter way by reminding us that the storms don’t last forever. Sweet tastes much sweeter after a dose of something bitter! “Rejoice in the Lord always...” Sometimes that’s a tall order. It seemed to be lot easier when I was younger, but nowadays rejoicing “always” isn’t so easy. Writer Ann Lamott reflects on this. She says, “My experience is that you don’t always get what you want – but you get what you get. As you get older, you start to work with what you’re getting instead of crossing your arms bitterly because you didn’t get what you wanted. ‘Okay, here we are. A new 24 hours is starting right now, and this is what we’ve got in our hands now.’ Age is such an incredible blessing, the softening and rounding of corners. And the sort of meat-tenderizing effects of aging, like being a stone in the river – the sanding down of sharp edges.” Rejoicing is the ability to extract gratitude from the daily happenings of life. The person who rejoices is not someone who is waiting for life to be perfect; not someone who expects that everything is going to happen just the way they want it to happen. The rejoicing person does not wait for conditions to be right for rejoicing. A grateful person rejoices. Alfred D’Souza wrote: “For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” ‘Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He springs up like a flower and withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure...Man’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed...All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come. You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made.’ (Job 14) Rejoice! God loves YOU!