I wonder if children are taught in school today that “Rain, mixed with snow, sleet, and wind gusts of up to 45 miles per hour in February will produce above average temperatures, and early vegetation growth in March.”  Still, most of us are probably more familiar with “April showers bring May flowers.”

Regardless of which rhyme you prefer, spring is a time when new life comes into the world.  We’re very fortunate to live in a part of the world where we can celebrate Pascha at a time when nature is in this process of renewal.  Just think of the relationship between how the Easter season takes place during spring, and how our Lord brought life into the world at a time when it needed life, and how He accomplished this with His own death and resurrection.

Of course the seasons and the weather do not always agree with the Church’s calendar!  Once in Wisconsin we celebrated Easter in one and a half feet of snow!  Another time when I was at the seminary in Boston, I even saw a friend of mine (a nun) proclaim that “Christ is Risen” to a bunch of trees!  It might seem silly some of you, but there was a very deep meaning to why she did this.  She was disturbed because the trees hadn’t blossomed after Pascha, and they should have done so as a testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I think she was right.

This had a major impact on me, and it has always makes me think about an experience that I had during my first tour in Afghanistan.

Aside from the fact that I had never been there before, the weather in Afghanistan was very unpredictable.  We arrived after what we had been told was a 20 year drought. There were many dust storms because of that.  But, the drought came to an end when we invaded.  Ironically, many of the locals thought that the invasion was a sign of divine intervention.  At any rate, the dust eventually settled, and winter arrived.  The snow also arrived along with hail, rain, and floods.  By the middle of the winter, our camp looked like a lake resort with us in the middle of it.

Then at one point, I don’t remember exactly when this occurred, but towards the end of the winter, I woke up very early in the morning, I came out of my tent, and I saw little purple flowers that looked like tulips poking through the sand bags that lined our defensive walls.  The sight of flowers growing out of sand bags, and barbed wire that separated us from the rest of the world seemed very unusual to me.  So, I picked as many flowers that I could get my hands on.  It’s unusual for a 20 year old soldier in a Special Forces unit to pick flowers – let alone to do so in a combat zone.  It might even have been wrong for me not to have left them for everyone else to look at.  But, I felt like I had no other choice.  They were one of the only beautiful things that I saw when I was in there.

But there was something else.  Aside from the fact that they looked out of place on our defense walls, they blossomed long before the other vegetation did.

Maybe God was showing me what He could do despite what I could do?  Maybe He was a calling me to repentance by showing me a quick glimpse of something that could proclaim the new life that God brings into the world in such a simple way?

There are times when many things seem out of place and out of order.  But God gives reason and order to everything. God’s Holy will always prevails no matter what the circumstances might be.  He even uses unexpected opportunities to bring us to repentance, and to tell us that He is the life of the world.  “Christ is Risen!”             UFr. Jason