Spring's great in all sorts of ways: actual warmth from the sun, lighter mornings and longer evenings, flowers and blossom to cheer up the hedgerows and gardens, renewed birdsong and, of course, free-range hens start laying regularly again. With the current chicken lockdown, 'free-range' is confined at the moment, which is a pity, so they need a bit more company during the day, but ours seem happy enough - lots of eggs being laid in a variety of colours. And what's more, some are about to hatch into fluffy little chicks! It must nearly be Easter.
Daffodils, Easter bunnies and Easter eggs are all cheerful seasonal reminders of creation all around us. Add to that lambing and everywhere seems to be bursting into new life. Maybe there are even babies being born into your family at this time of year. Indeed four of ours arrived between the end of February and early April.
New life, though, quickly turns into older life. As the years go by, what started out fresh and full of hope begins to accumulate problems, defects, mistakes, guilt. There seems to be no turning back to the newness of life and innocence of early childhood. Don't we all sometimes long for that? Lazy, carefree summer days, before we became burdened with the need to earn money and aware of the responsibility for every wrong word that we've uttered or deed that we've performed, all the people we've let down or hurt, all our anger that we now regret, all the times that we could have helped but didn't, all the lies that have led to a tangled web which we would be better off never having spun. The only way out is that we shall finally die. That can become quite a depressing thought in itself, but what if death isn't the end and we carry all our guilt and shame into the next world?
There is, though, a better way out of all this. Jesus offers us new life if we believe in him as the Son of God who came to die on our behalf. If we accept our guilt and ask his forgiveness, then we can receive that new life. It entails giving our lives to him, which is costly, but in return he takes all responsibility for our past failings. All our guilt and shame is removed from us and cast away as far as the East is from the West (Psalm 103, verse 12). We are set free of our past and there is no condemnation for anyone who is in Christ - whatever we've done or said, wherever we've been (Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verse 1). Becoming a Christian involves a transaction - we give up ownership of our lives and God gives us new ones with a clean start. It's as if we've been born again, with the innocence of early childhood. In fact, that is how Jesus describes it - being born again (John's Gospel, chapter 3, verse 3) - and he tells us that we need to respond to him as children, with a faith that hasn't been dulled by human experience (Mark's Gospel, chapter 10, verse 15).
Becoming a Christian isn't joining a club called church; it isn't agreeing to start living better; it isn't about regularly going to services on a Sunday morning. All these things are good and helpful. However, being a Christian involves giving up your own tainted life and receiving a fresh unstained one in return. It costs everything, but we get everything and more back in return. It's a new life, and God sends his us Holy Spirit to stop us messing this one up like the last one.
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