When Winter Breaks

After a long winter, there comes a moment every year when you feel the change before you fully see it. The air softens. The sun lingers a little longer in the sky. Patches of grass begin to appear where snow covered everything for months.

We are in one of those moments this week.

Image by Nils from Pixabay

After a long stretch of cold and gray skies, we went outside and played pickleball at the park this weekend for the first time in a long time. It was nothing particularly remarkable: just some paddles, a ball, and some sunshine. But after so many weeks indoors, it felt like the world itself was waking up again. Now, a rainstorm eventually rolled in, and we had to cut the game short, but we sure gave it a run for as long as we could.

Spring does that to us. It reminds us that winter does not last forever.

The changing of the seasons has always carried a deeper meaning for people of faith. The Bible itself uses the imagery of winter giving way to spring to picture renewal and hope. In the Song of Solomon, we read these words:

“For behold, the winter is past;

The rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth,

The time of singing has come.”(Song of Solomon 2:11–12)

Anyone who has lived through a long winter in northeast Ohio knows how true that is. When the flowers finally appear, and the birds begin to sing again, it feels like life itself has returned.

C. S. Lewis captured this same idea in his beloved story The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In the land of Narnia, an evil spell has frozen the world in an endless winter. Snow covers the land year after year. Nothing grows. Nothing changes. The people describe their situation with a haunting phrase: “It is always winter, but never Christmas.”

Image by Angela from Pixabay

However, there was a promise, a prophecy that the characters in Narnia clung to:

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.

And with that prophecy, things began to change. The snow starts to melt. Streams begin to run again. The air grows warmer. Spring slowly returns to Narnia. The Narnians realize that the long winter is ending because Aslan, the true king, has come back.

Lewis was not just writing a fantasy story. Like so much of his work, the story quietly echoes the Christian story. For believers, Easter is the moment when the long winter of sin and death begins to break. The resurrection of Jesus is the turning point of the whole story. The Apostle Paul writes:

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”(1 Corinthians 15:20)

That word firstfruits is important. It is an agricultural term. It refers to the first part of the harvest that appears at the beginning of the growing season. The firstfruits are the sign that more is coming.

In other words, the resurrection of Jesus is the first sign that new life has begun.

Just as the first warm day of spring tells us that winter is losing its grip, the empty tomb tells us that death does not have the final word. Resurrection has begun. Life is returning. The long winter is breaking.

Every year, as Easter approaches, the world around us quietly preaches this same sermon. The snow melts—the trees bud. The flowers appear. The earth itself seems to whisper the promise that God has written into creation from the very beginning.

Winter does not last forever.

Because of Easter, we know that sorrow will not last forever either. Sin, suffering, and death do not have the final word in God’s story.

We are still in Lent, so soon we will celebrate with the rest of creation that not only has Spring officially arrived, but more importantly, Christ is risen and is alive.