Winter or Spring?

Yesterday I spent several hours in the frigid cold shoveling snow. I shoveled and the snow continued to come so before long, there was more snow to shovel. I started the day shoveling snow, and I ended the day shoveling snow.

I thought about spring. I saw my poor frozen daffodils who stuck their heads out too early this year.

C.S. Lewis wrote a story with a setting much like my garden at the moment. There is snow and ice everywhere. My daffodils who woke up too soon are frozen as they stand. The land where Lewis’ story is set is Narnia. Narnia is the land where it is “always winter but never Christmas.” The point is that Narnia is frozen in all that is hard and cold about winter with none of the celebration and joy.

Narnia is an imaginary land where we can learn many spiritual lessons. Narnia is a world frozen in the spell of evil (cast by the White Witch). The land and the creatures who live there are all under the Witch’s spell. Her grip is strong, and there is only one power who can break her spell.

Lewis describes what is needed to break the spell of evil over Narnia:

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”

We don’t live in Narnia. We live in the real world where sin has left such a mark and evil has such a terrible choke-hold that wrongs seem right, winter seems forever, hearts are cold and sorrows last on and on.

But spring will come bursting from beneath the cold and snow even in Pittsburgh!

Spring can also come to my heart and yours long before the seasons change. Jesus comes to push back the evil in my own heart. Jesus comes to make wrongs right. Jesus breaks the choke-hold of sin on my heart. Jesus brings warming love and grace to my cold heart. Jesus is the Lord of restoration, and He is on the move!