1
5—AFTER THE SNOW
1
FOR, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.” And the trees of the wood sing out at the presence of the Lord, till the world that was so cold and snowy is like the young daughter who dreamed of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing.
But that of which the ruin in the picture is the symbol was not a dream. Nor is it now as a dream when one awaketh. The trouble which grieved the night has not floated off on the wings of the morning. There has been a turning of the captivity and the hard weather has passed, but there is still something stark in our landscape, like the ruin in the midst of the white cherry. There is a fact, a memory, a possibility, that strikes up and faces us wherever we look. That knot of painful circumstances is there; that fear, that fearful thing, may be waiting in the shadows to spring upon us like a panther on a fawn. These things still are; it would be a kind of falsehood to act as though they were not.
The picture is a figure of the true: it is full of grace and a lovely lightness, but it is the ruin that arrests the eye and gives character to the whole. Take it out, and you have merely a pretty page of scenery, and life is more than that. The charm of leaf and bud after a time of snow is not all that God has for those whom He is preparing to minister to others.