A guest post by my good friend, Koos Stenger

Springtime is here again. That most wonderful of all seasons when the death of winter has been overcome. New life springs forth in great abundance, ultimately culminating in the celebration of Easter.

It’s that heart-stirring time when a new symphony of life rings out across the fields. At first, flowers shyly stick their tiny colored heads out of the barren ground. But soon their presence becomes bolder as they unite with all of nature showing off their heavenly apparel in wild abandonment to a world so hungry for hope and happiness.

Birds join in, while singing their celestial praises, with melodies so tender that no earthly musician can ever match their angelic skills; lambs and baby goats, kids with freckled, warm furs of brown and white, gamble about the fields, and branches break forth in delightful blossoms. Aromatic scents of freshly plowed earth linger over the fields, and a gentle wind, no longer icy and cold, caresses the world that is being kissed by the early morning rays of a golden sun rising in the East.

This is the season of Spring, that moment in time in which all of nature has joined together full of longing and anticipation. There is hope, there is faith, and there is … life.

Life is the key word. Life is what it’s all about. Life, that unexplainable mystery we all yearn for. It’s the power that makes all things beautiful. It’s the opposite of death, that sickening force of darkness the whole creation fears and abhors.

Life is also what the Gospel is about. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly.” The Gospel means resurrection. The Gospel means the end of winter. It means Springtime. Through Jesus, man overcame death and may now enter into everlasting Spring. Life overcame death and the same serenade that is heard in our earthly Springtime will be born in us at the very moment we fall down before the Master.

Jesus said:

“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on Him.” (1)

Did I read that correctly? Are there people who will not see life and who will not feel the everlasting Spring rising in their bodies, whose lungs will not be filled with the freshness of health and victory? Apparently so.

Puzzling as it may be, not everyone will want to bow down before the creator of Spring. The apostle John wrote:

“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” (4)

Obviously, that is not God’s fault, and yet everyone seeks to beat death and so enter into everlasting Spring. “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” (2) Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker writes, ‘The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else: it is a mainspring of human activity.’ (3)

Secular humanist Luc Ferry, a staunch unbeliever is an example of that. He wrote, ‘The quest for a salvation without God is at the heart of every great philosophical system, and that is its essential and ultimate objective.’ (5)

Salvation without God?

Springtime without the Creator who said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,’ makes no sense. It will not work. Only one man knew how to beat death, and He did that by dying on Good Friday, and rising from the grave three days later. To Him, the only wise God, belongs all the glory.

(1) John 3:36 KJV

(2) Romans 8:23 KJV

(3) Becker, Denial of Death, 17

(4) John 3:19 KJV

(5) Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living,