New Life in Spring

Sunday at Pillnitz Castle in Dresden - the Lion was so afraid of me that it turned to stone...
At this time all is bursting out in greens, reds, blues, yellows, whites. The birds gave me a beautiful concert during my 7 a.m. run last Friday morning; life is returning early to central Europe, and I am reminded of returning life when we think only death is there.

In the Summer of 2005 I began teaching English at the airport here. Among the many baggage handlers in my class was Christian, a soft-spoken kind husband with two small children at home and blond hair and blue eyes with boundless trust. After a few weeks I noticed Christian was not in class anymore. I asked some of his colleagues. It seemed he had been in a horrible motorcycle accident – his bike slid in the rain under a big truck, and he had countless broken bones and skull injuries. He was in a coma with uncertain prospects. Over the course of about a month I asked about his condition, and nothing was changing. I decided to stop asking – it was very painful to me. Then several months passed by. In the summer of 2006 I heard the manager mention the recent funeral of a colleague in the nearby village – a colleague who had been very sick for almost a year. For me it was clear, for Christian came from this village. I was tragically sad, and thought how I wish I could have seen him, but wishes….. I grieved for him and buried him in my mind privately.

In November I was preparing for class when I noticed out of the corner of my eye a face that caught my immediate attention. I looked round the corner and froze with a gasp – there stood the “resurrected” Christian in front of me and smiled his soft-spoken smile with those same blue eyes. I was speechless. Then I said, “Christian, you are here! I didn’t know what had happened!” I started crying some and asked him how long he had been back at work. He was just starting again. I told him I was so happy to see him and so happy that he was alive and could work again – he did not know I had thought he was dead. I saw him again last week at the airport, and again I felt I was looking into the eyes of the promise of the resurrection – time froze again as I talked to him told him again I was so happy to see him.

How deceiving are our thoughts – our minds! We delude ourselves to think we know all we need, we think we see the full picture, yet we can still be severely misled. After ages of living in deception, the simple truth stands in front of us, and we freeze as the reality we have constructed shatters before the astounding beauty of living truth. Now I am not talking about people we thought dead, but aspects of our own selves and lives we deny so long that we cannot even acknowledge they exist. And then events coalesce before us and in us, and we see the beauty of truth that makes us get to know ourselves dejà vu. And life begins anew with the promise of the resurrection – you shall know that which is real and true, and it shall set you free – the words of Jesus, another person whose reality was too much for his life context.