From Kendra Langdon Juskus, Managing Editor
Flourish Magazine, Winter 2010
As winter rounds the final bend of its course, we find ourselves balanced between enduring the season’s final, coldest days, and gratefully anticipating the relief of spring. For many Christians, this is also when we walk the tightrope of Lent according to the church calendar, empowered to abide a season of fasting only by the promise of the resurrection feast.
So it’s appropriate that this winter issue of Flourish magazine attempts a similar balance. It includes reminders of hardship and grief, reminiscent of winter’s enforced denial, but concludes its last page with a reflection on gardening—the delight of cultivation that reignites each spring.
In two separate pieces, Scott Sabin leads us into the labyrinth of suffering experienced by so many of our poorest neighbors living in ravaged landscapes, including the victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. But he doesn’t leave us without hope: Where creation’s groaning leads to mourning, its restoration also leads to rejoicing.
Rusty Pritchard’s interview with Katharine Hayhoe and Andrew Farley, authors of A Climate for Change, is a peek into a life balanced between a husband and wife, a pastor and a climate scientist, Christian faith and environmental stewardship. And “green mama” Tracey Bianchi steadies the sometimes draining bustle of parenthood with encouragement to remember what is deeply and richly good for both busy families and creation. Such re-centering helps us to learn that “sustainable living is absolutely doable.”
The balance of seasons (of both the climatic and spiritual kind) is an oft-overlooked good in this period of history when we can eat tomatoes in February and visit indoor water parks while the snow piles up outside. But God puts the seasons in place, and in an effort to be attuned to his Spirit, we acknowledge and learn from their cycles.
In that spirit, we invite you to snuggle into the rest of winter with one of the books reviewed here, and, when the time comes to step into the freshness of spring, gather your inspiration from Christine Sine’s piece, “Gardening With God,” where she reminds us of “the faithfulness of a God who comes to us in all seasons and events of life.”
