DOES GOD END?








love
love
A few springs ago I was driving on a stretch of Gary Avenue – right by Cosley Zoo. Buds were beginning to burst out of the branches and daffodils were sprouting sunshiny heads. As I drove by the petting zoo, I imagined the fluffy yellow chicks ready to break out of their vernal shells.

My five year old son, Ben, was enjoying the burst of air that blew in from his cracked window and the Kindermusic tunes on our car radio. In the middle of our springy day, and out of the blue, Ben asked, “Mama, does God end?”

I was tickled, delighted by his question. Kids come up with the most profound, insightful thoughts sometimes. Don’t they?

Does God end? I turned the question around in my mind several times, savoring its beauty and simplicity . . . not wanting to crack it; destroying its contemplative shell.

“Does God end?” Ben asked again, getting a bit impatient.

Instead of blurting out an emphatic “No . . .He goes on forever!” I began to think about the times in my life when I’d felt as if God had come to an end.

-During a seemingly endless string of lonely single years – when I longed for a husband but instead ate most of my meals alone, slept alone, and worried about my proverbially ticking biological clock.

-During a season in my early thirties when a degenerative disc caused so much pain in my lower back that I couldn’t sit, or lie down or even stand . . . but, had to pace in circles around my home in order to slightly remit the pain.

-AND, during the season of sadness that, due to the back degeneration, prohibited me from getting pregnant and adding a deeply longed-for third child to our family.

“MOHHHHM!” Ben interrupted my reminiscing, asking yet another persistent time, “Does God end?”

Through the car’s rearview mirror, I looked into my son’s inquisitive chocolate brown eyes, “Sometimes, when we go through tough times in our lives it can feel as if God has ended, Honey. Remember when snow was covering the ground and we were sledding down our favorite hill?”

“Yah,” he said.

“During the dead of winter, we couldn’t imagine that buds were hiding inside all the bare snow covered branches. Could we?!”

“Nope,” he agreed, shaking his head.

“But now that spring is here, we realize that Life goes on – just like God – even when things seem dead and frozen to us.”

Ben seemed satisfied with my answer and stuck his hand out the window to glide on some cool, fresh air.

As we drove I couldn’t help thinking about ways God had brought Life to my personal winters. He broke my winter of singleness through the gift of marriage to my hunk of a hubby, Bryan. Through physical therapy and mercies new each day, a Living God helps me manage chronic back pain. And, through the life giving gift of adoption; He has given me a precious, precocious, perfect daughter.

2000 years ago, I imagine that 12 stinky fishermen – Jesus’ best friends – were asking Ben’s question: DOES GOD END? On Easter, after three days of waiting, they got their answer. God does not end. Though He submitted to death; He lives on.

After Ben and I got home, in celebration, I wrote the following poem:

CHRISTSPRING

Eternity’s harbinger roots and stems
In the turning tulips, sunny daffodils
Forsythia, hyacinth, and vernal egg

Budding, bursting, bounding forth
He rises – born new from earth’s tomb
Crowned with seed jacked, clothed in green and purple perfection:
Heavensprung Champion

Sometimes we can feel as if we’re living in a frozen, cold winter. . . even then, we can keep our eyes on spring and a God who doesn't end!