There is…

no prison so dank,
no shackle so confining,
no disobedience so egregious,
no blindness so dark,
no winter so long,

so as to keep Spring from making its arrival. None. Its buds and blossoms come regardless of the bleak season preceding its entrance.

Resurrection is the hallowed crescendo after the harrowing silence of a winter’s death—a season’s stripping that reduces branches to the bare and wide-opened embrace of colder winds.

It’s hard to think Spring when Winter continues its insistent knock. It’s hard to think grace when the consequences of sin leave a soul chained and blinded with remembrance.

Samson knew something of winter’s bite.

His life began well. He ended on the upswing, but the living in between reads more like a tragedy rather than the famed position given him in the Hebrews “Hall of Faith” (chapter 11).

God wanted more for him. His parents planned for more. But for “more” to be his portion, Samson would have to walk the plans of his God, and subsequently, of his parents’. And for all of the ways that he might have been faithful to those plans and to his covenantal vow as a Nazarite, we are privy to a majority of his “less” than moments. Moments that included:

• • Chasing after all manner of foreign women.

 

• • Gleaning honey from the carcass of a dead lion and feeding it to his parents.

 

• • Exacting revenge via foxtails and torches, the jawbone of a donkey, and the sword of his own hands.

 

• Playing games with God’s truth rather than honoring God’s truth with sacred and in reverent fear.

Indeed, some would argue that Samson had earned his chains, his blindness, and his mockery by men. Open rebellion to God’s ways always yields a well-deserved humbling at some point. I know. I’ve hosted my fair share of showcase moments along the way.

But to remain stuck in our chains … to assign ourselves a place of permanent shame and penance within the cold and barren of Winter … is to delay or to altogether miss the promise of Spring.

And to miss the grace of Spring is to miss everything.

Samson’s Spring came near his end. If you are one prone to spectacular endings—to the grandeur and polish of an epic finish—you’ll miss it. Samson’s resurrection didn’t begin between two pillars (Judges 16:29); it began in the dark and in the depths of a lonely prison cell.

“Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison. But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.” (Judges 16:22).

Just in case you missed it, let me type it again.

The hair on his head began to grow again.

Grow. The verb tsamach in the Hebrew language meaning, “to grow, to spring forth, to sprout.”[i]

No matter Samson’s sin and no matter his rebellion, God’s promise of Spring came to him in his darkest night, the seeds of which would grow and would ultimately result in his finest hour. God visited the cell of a sinner and planted his grace accordingly and in a very literal way.

I don’t know if Samson thought a lot about his hair in those days, but I imagine that he did. When a soul is stripped, both in the spiritual and in the physical, one cannot help but look for any sign of covering … of hope and rebirth … of new growth and of springing forth. With every passing day and with every difficult grinding, whenever Samson ran his fingers through the sparse seedlings of a new and growing strength, he was reminded of just how far he had fallen and of the grace afforded him for its gradual return.

It did return, at least in part. That’s the way of God’s grace. Despite our willful choices and hardened rebellion to God’s plan for our lives, his mercy is ready and available for its return. He planned for grace’s arrival, long before our sin mandated its need.

“‘The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: “The LORD Our Righteousness.”’” (Jeremiah 33:14-16).

Just in case you missed it, let me type it again.

In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line.

Sprout. The verb tsamach in the Hebrew language meaning, “to grow, to spring forth, to sprout.”[ii]

God’s grace. Shooting forth and bursting onto the scenes of our lives. Sometimes through the simple of a hair’s sprouting. All the time through the profound of a Son’s coming. A Son’s dying. A Son’s springing forth on a Spring morning, announcing once and for all that resurrection is here to stay.

That resurrection is the gift of Spring; it follows the stripping and cold of a Winter season. A season when remembering God’s promises is critical to survival. There is…

no prison so dank,
no shackle so confining,
no disobedience so egregious,
no blindness so dark,
no winter so long,

so as to keep Spring from making its arrival. None. And that, my friends, gets a hallelujah from my spirit and a prayer of thanks from my knees as they hit the bedroom floor, once again, in absolute wonder and awe of the gracious grace that has been seeded on my behalf and that is growing in strength with every passing day and with every intentional glimpse I make into the treasures of God’s Word. He is the worthy pause of my heart this week. Yours too, thus, I pray…

Grow us, Father, into a deeper understanding of all things eternal. Let us not settle for our prisons; instead, renew our hearts toward a healthier life—one that is free of the chains and of the condemnation that seeks to keep us captive in sin’s remembrance. Spring us forth from our cells and grow us in the light and truth of Spring’s renewal—the resurrected life of Easter’s Gift. In the name of the Father who knows us, and the Son who loves us, and the Holy Spirit who so willing tends to us, Amen and Amen.

Copyright © January 2009 – Elaine Olsen
[i] Baker & Carpenter, entry for “samah,” The Complete Word Study Dictionary Old Testament (Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 2003), 956.
[ii] Ibid.