Peter Carruthers
The 2nd of February (the Friday before last) was a significant day, and marked the transition into a new season. The date is either the middle of winter or the beginning of spring, depending on which calendar you use. In many places in rural North America, it is celebrated as ‘Groundhog Day’. And, in the church year, it is the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, marking the completion of the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany cycle.
I realise the 2nd of February is now more than a week ago, and observers of the church calendar will be turning their attention to Lent. But here, and in subsequent articles, by way of catch up, I offer some reflections on the date’s meanings: in this article, I explore the first of the above. My hope is that these insights will not only interest and entertain, but also edify and enrich - and, in some way, draw you closer to the God who orders the times and seasons (Genesis 1:14; Psalms 75:17, 104:19; Ecclesiastes 3:1-11; Daniel 2:21).
‘Midwinter spring’
Midwinter spring is its own season Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, Suspended in time, between pole and tropic. (T S Eliot, Little Gidding).
The astronomical seasons commence on the solstices or equinoxes, so the 2nd of February is the middle of astronomical winter, midway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. Spring is, therefore, still more than five weeks away.
The meteorological calendar assigns December, January and February to winter, meaning we are now more than two-thirds of the way through winter, with less than three weeks to go until the start of spring.
However, in the Celtic calendar the 2nd of February is the first day of spring, meaning spring is already underway. As with today’s astronomical seasons, the ancient Celts appear to have organised the seasons around the solstices and equinoxes (‘quarter days’), but with each season commencing at the mid-point between the two (‘cross-quarter days’). This means midwinter day is the shortest, and hence the darkest, day of the year and midsummer day the longest and brightest. There does seem to be a certain logic to this!
And, when I started writing this article last weekend, there were already enough signs of spring to favour the Celtic calendar. Here, in the west of England, I had already seen six of the Royal Society of Biology’s ‘ten signs of spring’: hazel catkins, snowdrops, daffodils, bumblebees, a butterfly, and I needed to cut my lawn. Maybe you have seen more? In addition, birds were singing louder and longer. In some places, Lesser Celandines were flowering. And there was just that feeling that spring is in the air; even more so now, a week later.
If you would like to, send me your ‘signs of spring’ pictures with a caption, plus place and date (by replying to this email), and, if I receive several, I’ll publish them here. Include a Bible verse or brief thought, if you wish.
Yet at the same time, winter is still with us. There has been frost several mornings over the last week or two. The wind on the hills has been icy. And, of course, February is usually the coldest month of the year, and, at least for some of us, snow is still a possibility.
The intersection of the timeless moment
T S Eliot opens Little Gidding,1 the fourth of his ‘Four Quartets’, with the phrase ‘midwinter spring’, a seeming contradiction, which he develops, as one writer describes, with a further apparent paradox, as “a season that is eternal and ‘suspended in time’, but also affected by the rotation of the earth and therefore becoming ‘sodden towards sundown’“.
This same commentator sees this motif as expressing Eliot’s “profound dissatisfaction with the dismal sequence of past, present and future”. The “anxiety produced by the weight of temporality and by inescapable mortality leads to a lofty aspiration, underlying some of the best lines of Four Quartets, specifically, to transcend the temporal in order to reach the timeless”. Later in the poem, Eliot speaks of “the intersection of the timeless moment”, suggestive of a breaking through of eternity into time.
Hope’s spring
The incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the promise of our own resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-58) and of the redemption of all things (Acts 3:21; Romans 8:19-21) give hope and substance to this aspiration, and a profound significance to our present ‘midwinter spring’.
‘Thy kingdom come’
Like spring just now, the kingdom of God has come, yet it is coming. Jesus announced that the kingdom of heaven was “at hand” (Matthew 3:2, 4:7, 10:7), had “come near” (Luke 10:9-11) and was “in your midst” (Luke 17:20-21). He spent much of His teaching explaining the characteristics of that kingdom and much of His ministry demonstrating the signs of that kingdom. Yet His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36) and still future (eg Matthew 25:1-30; Luke 13:22-30; 19:11), and we are to pray for its coming (Luke 11:2). “Through the coming of Christ the new age has been heralded - has dawned - has begun. But it has not yet appeared in full force”2 (see Hebrews 2:8-9).
The hope of Israel
This twofold ‘has come and is coming’ is re-iterated, but with a different emphasis, in the early chapters of Acts.
As we saw above, before His crucifixion at Passover (an early-spring festival), Jesus told his disciples that the kingdom had come. Yet, when they ask Him, after His resurrection, if He will “at this time restore the kingdom to Israel”, He, in effect, replied ‘not yet’. It was not for them to know when this would take place, and they had much work to do before it could happen anyway (Acts 1:6-8; see also Matthew 24:14).
Shortly after, the sending of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (a late-spring festival)3 and the healing of the lame man outside the Temple (Acts 3:1-26), Peter picks up the same theme.
Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago (Acts 3:19-21).
Jesus’ first coming, therefore, brings salvation from sin for all who receive Him and “times of refreshing” (which sound very much spring like!). His coming again will ‘restore all things’, including the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6 and 3:21 use a similar Greek verb, also used in other Jewish literature to refer to the restoration of Israel to its own land4).
Perpetual spring
And spring is a foretaste of this coming Messianic kingdom. Spring flowers, spring rains and abundant grain harvests (in Israel’s climate, wheat and barley are harvested in late spring) appear several times in OT prophecy as images of the restoration, of the age to come (Psalm 65:13; Song of Solomon 2:11-13; Isaiah 35:1-2, 41:18, 44:1-4, 61:11; Joel 2:22-23). So much so that William Cowper (1731 – 1800) saw the Messianic age as a ‘perpetual spring’, incorporating the best of all the seasons:
The fruitful field Laughs with abundance, and the land once lean, Or fertile only in its own disgrace, Exults to see its thistly curse repealed. The various seasons woven into one, And that one season an eternal spring. (From William Cowper, The Task, Book 6)
As sure as the dawn
For many us, there may be ‘winters’ of various sorts in our own lives just now. And there is certainly much of ‘winter’ in our world at present, with surely more to come. As for the watchman waiting for the dawn in the early hours, for whom “morning comes, and also the night” (Isaiah 21:11-12), so for us, ‘spring comes, but also the winter’. Yet, although we may have to wait a little longer, the coming of spring is as sure as the coming of the dawn. Jesus’ kingdom comes now to all who receive Him as Lord and King, and He will come again to rule and reign as King and Lord over all the earth, and to ‘restore all things’.
“Surely I am coming quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20)
Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth (Hosea 6:3).
Moltmann, Jürgen. 1985. God in Creation. SCM Press Ltd, London, p 122.
At the beginning of Luke’s first book, he alone among the gospel writers reports Jesus in the Temple at Jerusalem at His coming of age during the early-spring festival of Passover; in the latter part of the book, we see Jesus' returning to Jerusalem and the Temple at Passover for His passion and resurrection. Acts opens with coming of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem at the late-spring festival of Pentecost, and ends with Paul returning to Jerusalem at Pentecost for his trial and imprisonment. Luke, therefore, configures his whole corpus around Israel’s spring festivals.
Kinzer, Mark. 2021. Besorah. The Resurrection of Jerusalem and the Healing of a Fractured Gospel. Cascade Books, Eugene, OR, USA.