Christmas in the Spring

Psalm 63

We sang a song when I was  in college at the AO House. “Thy Loving Kindness is better than life… my lips shall praise thee, thus will I bless thee, I will lift up my hands in thy name.” Verse 3 in Hebrew reads “Since/because your hesed is better than life, my lips shall praise you.” “Life” here isn’t “the meaning of life” or "value of a life" but life as in nature, as in green plants, running streams of water, fresh air, sunshine.  Nature at its best. A walk in the mountains on a sunny, warm day. So God’s loving faithful kindness is better than this? Just how does that work?

If we think of God’s love as a concept, and idea, even a principle, it remains in our thoughts as an abstraction, perhaps even a philosophy or ethic. “That’s nice… next.”  But is this how we experience nature when we take a walk on a beautiful spring day after a cold, wet winter? No!

We deeply breathe in the fresh air, we open our eyes wide to see the beauty of new life, we listen to the sounds of trees rustling in the wind and birds chirping age old songs. We richly inhale the aromas of flowers, green grasses, and budding trees. We even shed as much of our clothing as we dare so our skin can touch and feel the warm sun and the fresh dry air.  In other words, nature is to be experienced with all our senses. And then our senses touch our hearts and we say “I love walking in the woods, I love running through gardens, I love life.”

This indeed is how God wants us to experience His love, His “hesed,” which means faithful, reliable, trustworthy, unfailing love. God created us for love, to be experienced deeply in our bodies and in our souls.

Since it is almost Christmas, when we celebrate God come into the earth and living among us as a man, we can also celebrate God’s love coming into our hearts, into the deep recesses of our souls and filling us with his love like our lungs fill with air on a fresh spring day. Breathe deeply this Christmas season. Open your eyes, listen to the song. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good.