Variety: Song of Songs 2v11–12

Spring arrived slowly. It felt like a long wait this year, or maybe that was just me. First, a few brave crocuses pushed through frost-hardened ground. Then blossom. Then light that stays a little longer each evening. Each piece unfolds in its allotted time.

This spring we moved allotment. Twenty metres or less, but a striking difference. The old plot was neglected by the previous tenants, fierce with horsetail and waist-high thistles, stubborn plants with roots that seemed to go down forever. You could tug all afternoon and they would be back the following week. The new plot was loved and tended. And the weeds we found were nettles and forget-me-nots. A gentle pull with a gloved hand, and they came clean away.

Not all weeds are equal. Some hold on. Some fight back. Some sting. Some come away easy.

Spring, with its annual theatre of new life, invites us to look honestly at what is growing in us. Not just the fruitful things. The stubborn weeds too.

We are a generation more aware than perhaps any before us of what lies beneath. Therapy culture has taught us to name the deep roots of our emotions and behaviours. We are also more aware of what is happening on the surface. 24-hour news brings us minute by minute updates on disasters in far-away places. Social media has surfaced spiky things we would rather keep hidden.

And yet the stubborn things remain. Anxiety that does not shift. Patterns of sin that outlast our best intentions. The horsetail of the soul, back again.

And into this reality, an ancient voice speaks. Song of Songs 2:11–12 says, ‘See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing birds has come.’ It is not a command to feel better. It is an invitation to experience. To look up and notice what is already changing. To see the flowers as well as the weeds.

The voice of someone who loves us. Someone who has watched the winter with us and knows, with quiet certainty, that it is passing.

There is still work to do. Some roots run deep and will persist. Jesus does not shy away from the sharp spikes and choking tendrils. He tends us with the same love that turns a tired, overgrown plot into a fruitful paradise.

This week, in the spaces and places you find yourself, are you more struck by the weeds or by the flowers? How can you help make your workplace, street, home or friendship group a place where people can flourish?

London Institute of Contemporary Christianity