Here we are coming up to the third week of Easter.  The snow is melting… no, it’s freezing over… no, it’s snowing again… no it’s … raining.  Bright days and cloudy ones, clear days and rainy ones and snowy ones.  All merging into Alberta in the springtime! 

That must have been how his disciples saw Jesus’s ministry.  The high moments and the low ones, the moments of confusion and the moments of clarity, all merging, in hindsight, to “the time He was with us”. 

Would it have become clearer in these days between his crucifixion and subsequent rising, and the day of Pentecost, or would it have just become more confusing?

We know from past experience that, yes, the snow WILL eventually melt, the green blades of grass WILL rise, the flowers will appear, the days WILL get warmer, and Summer WILL be here.  (Although many of US will not be here, we will be on vacation.)  And then Autumn and harvest, then Winter and snow and cold and fires in the fireplace.  And then spring again, with its unpredictable weather. 

For us, the weather may not be predictable, the cycle of the seasons is.  For those early followers of Jesus, maybe it was similar.  The days were more like the weather than the seasons.  But after he arose, Jesus promised he would send them a helper.  So in these days of uncertainty, they waited for the helper. 

When spring eventually quits dithering and arrives completely, our days will change.  Then with the changing of the seasons, we will do it all again. 

When Pentecost arrived, and the Holy Spirit descended, the days of the disciples changed.  But unlike the seasons cycling, this change was forever.  Never quite predictable, always surprising, always new.  And that unpredictability and surprising newness continues to this day, for us. 

Well, except for the weather.  I mean the seasons.

Terry Blois