He told us how amazed he was, that first year in New York, walking to church on Easter Sunday and noticing that blossoms had appeared on the trees almost overnight, feeling the warmth of the sun for the first time after a long winter, hearing the birds sing, witnessing tulips and daffodils springing up from earth that looked cracked and barren. He experienced the beginning of Eastertide very differently when he could suddenly see, hear, smell and feel the new life of creation all around him.

He wrote a song in response, which I still listen to every Easter season. During the Covid lockdowns, as I ventured out on my daily walk around my local park, I would play this song at full volume through my headphones, reminding myself to pay attention to the signs of spring beginning to appear – a little later here in Toronto than in New York – noticing the buds on the trees, the green shoots poking up through the ground, singing at the top of my voice:

The winter is o’er
Chase away old thoughts of sadness and fear
The Saviour who rose
Calls us to resurrect hope and good cheer

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! The winter is o’er

New hope has arrived
Smelling of springtime as flowers appear
The promise of life
Blooms from the barren and frost-bitten earth 

Springtime is here
The rolled away stone, the victorious Son
Death could not hold him down
Tore up the broken ground
Jesus our Lord overpower’d the grave

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! Jesus is risen

In those days when regular routines of worship were disrupted, this became my Easter ritual, singing and walking in creation, trying to instill hope into my body. And as I visited the same park daily and paid attention to the changing seasons around me more closely than ever before, I started to wonder what Jesus’ death and resurrection means for creation.

As a child in Sunday School, I memorized John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son,” but somehow “the world” always meant “people.” In my evangelical upbringing, I understood that God loved people so much that Jesus died on the cross in our place, so that we could be forgiven and one day escape this world to go to heaven. Only later did I begin to wonder what it meant that God so loved the world.

If God’s love for all creation resulted in the incarnation, then Jesus’ death and resurrection brings redemption to the whole earth, not just to human beings. If the events we celebrate at Easter signal the beginning of the redemption and restoration of all creation, then we should not expect to escape from this world. Instead, Easter reminds us that one day the whole earth will be restored, and all creation will be set free from suffering and decay and worship the creator.

In this Easter season, as we witness signs of resurrection in creation all around us, let us repent from the ways we have destroyed and polluted God’s creation and re-commit ourselves to praying and working for the restoration of all things.

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As a relative newcomer to Canada, winter is something I am still getting used to. Being from the UK, I should be accustomed to grey skies and short winter days. Yet I always feel a sense of dread as winter approaches, as I pull out my ‘SAD’ lamp in preparation for the drop in energy I experience, and the cold, dark mornings. This is my fifth winter in Canada, but I am still surprised by it. I am surprised by the extreme cold snaps, the unexpected thaws, the heavy snowfalls, those beautiful freezing days of blue sky and bright sunshine. And I am surprised by the stillness. The absence of bird song, the inactivity of the raccoons in my garden and the cats in my house. There are no leaves to rustle on the trees, there are no ripples on a frozen lake.

I wonder if I dread the winter because I am not very good at stillness. If I made the rules, it would always be summer, and life would always be full – full of people, events, work, social commitments, travel. If I could, I would skip winter completely and jump straight into spring.

As a city dweller, I can too easily become disconnected from the natural cycles of the earth. I can forget that each season is necessary for life. The natural seasons of our world, the short days and the longer nights – they are necessary. Trees cannot blossom or produce fruit all year round. Leaves must fall to the ground and die in order for new life to begin. Animals hibernate, retreating into a safe dark place until spring. Winter is a season when creation slows down, rests, regenerates.

This winter I have been trying to learn from the stillness of creation.

Maybe I should not expect to have the same energy and pace of life in winter as I do in summer. Maybe human beings were made to join with the rest of creation in moving through the natural seasons. Seasons of energy and growth, blossom and fruitfulness, seasons of death and rebirth, rest and stillness. Maybe, for humans too, winter can be a season of rest, regeneration and renewal. In the darkness of the earth seeds germinate, begin to grow. Our bodies, too, can rest in the quiet darkness.

In a culture that treats people who are more productive as more valuable, and views busyness as a badge of honour, learning to rest can be a radical act. Activist Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, says that “rest is resistance.” That cultivating a deliberate practice of slowing down and choosing rest is an act of resistance against capitalism and white supremacy, systems that treat human bodies as tools for production and labour and that are driving the planet to exhaustion. She says, “I took to rest and naps and slowing down as a way to save my life, resist the systems telling me to do more… Rest pushes back and disrupts [these] systems. It is a counter narrative.”

Choosing to rest can be an act of resistance against systems that extract labour and resources from human bodies and from creation until there is nothing left. Creation teaches us that rest is necessary for regeneration and renewal. Winter reminds us that it is not natural to produce fruit all year round.

This winter I am trying to learn from creation.

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