Persistent Faith

       After a long cold winter like the one we just had, spring feels just amazing doesn’t it?  We’re not used to it yet, so we don’t take it for granted.        

       When did you know it was spring?  When it first got above freezing and the snow started melting?  When you saw the first robin?  My favorite sure sign of spring is the first time it rains, and you go outside and there is this incredible earthy smell that somehow smells like things starting to grow.  I can’t describe it, but I know it when I smell it; rich, earthy, clean, sweet, fresh; it just smells like new hope.

       Spring is wonderful but it is a risky time of year.   Sometimes the crocus pushes right through and blooms and things start off, but you never know when snow is coming or the next hard frost.  It is so warm and sunny that it makes gardeners start thinking of planting flowers and gardens but those that are experienced are still waiting even though there are things budding and blooming on their own. 

       But as I keep telling myself, we’re not in Kansas any more.  It snowed last May and it still could (not that I want it to).  It’s not quite time yet to trust enough to set out pots of flowers and plant garden.  They could so easily end up frozen. 

       Yet even as the gardeners among us are wary and waiting, the farmers are out tilling and planting in the fields.   People who plant, whether farmers or gardeners, are the definition of persistence.  No matter how good or poor last year’s harvest was, they get impatient as the calendar moves from February to March and into April.  No matter how challenging and difficult it was to harvest, they can’t wait to get out and start all over again, year after year. 

       The season of spring itself is persistent; insisting on poking through no matter how strong and how long winter lingers.  Once winter’s hold is loosened, spring keeps coming back until it wins and winter is no more.  You see it in the buds on the trees, the grass that begins to green, and in the first flowers that bloom.   God’s creative power triumphs once again.  It is the gentle explosion of new life that is a taste of God's promise of  resurrection.

       Our faith needs to be persistent like spring; hanging on and coming back even when it seems to be gone.  We all will have times of uncertainty and doubt, when we even throw angry questions at God.  What is important is that we keep asking, keep in conversation, and keep searching.  The psalm that Jesus quotes from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1) turns to the sureness of faith with the promise that "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord" (verse 27).  When grief, hard times, despair, or illness happen in our lives, it may feel like we have lost our way.  But God is even more persistent than spring, staying with us and restoring us in love.
       When the Canaanite woman confronts Jesus, she is persistent.  Her daughter needs healing and she believes that Jesus is the one who can help her.  Even though she should not even talk to him, she comes shouting at Jesus, calling attention to herself and her need.  It is so bad that the disciples tell Jesus to make her go away.  Instead when she puts herself in his way by kneeling at his feet, Jesus engages her in a faith dialogue.  She responds by countering every reason he gives for not helping.  In the end, he not only helps her by healing her daughter, he praises her faith and makes clear that God's vision of salvation is much bigger than ours.   Read Matthew 15:21-28