Have you thought why this first season of the year is called “Spring”? Your dictionary will tell you that it is because it is the time when everything “springs or grows,” “begins to appear,” “to come into being.”

The spring is the source or beginning of anything, and this Spring season is the beginning of the new life of the year, the time of the beginning, spring, or birth of the new plants, of insects, birds, lambs, and other living creatures.

The Word of God tells us that Jesus is the real Beginning of all things, the One by whom and from whom all things are brought forth, and come into being, and so He is the true Spring of the whole creation of God.

When the father of John the Baptist spoke of the coming of Jesus to our world, he called Him “the Dayspring from on high.” Jesus is the Dayspring, or the spring of day. God “called the light Day;” and Jesus said, “I am, the light.” He is the spring of the light that makes the day; it all comes from Him, the Sun of Righteousness, the Dayspring.

Think, too, what makes the bright Spring season. It is the earth turning again towards the sun from which it had been turned away all the winter. Then the warm sun causes the buds and leaves to spring from the trees, and the plants and flowers to spring from the ground.

This new springing of all life is caused by the sunlight, and Jesus is the true Light, the real Sun. So He is the Spring, not of the day only, but of the seasons, of all the life and growth, the beauty and fruitfulness, the seedtime and harvest, that the sun brings to our earth.

And as the sun comes nearer and nearer,

“Thou wak’st again, O Earth,
From Winter’s sleep;
Bursting with voice of mirth
From icy keep,
And laughing at the sun,
Who hath their freedom won,
Thy waters leap.”

But where do these laughing, leaping waters really come from?

“Whence came the river, so strong and clear,
That waters the meadows far and near?
From a clear little spring
Like a lustrous pearl,
Where the mosses cling,
And the fern leaves curl,
On the hill-top’s height,
Bubbling up so bright,
Fed by mountain rain,
Without taint, without stain.”

But this “clear little spring” “bubbling up so bright” is not the real beginning of the water. Like everything else in all creation, it comes from Jesus, the Beginning, “the fountain of living waters.” All the water in the world is His Word, His life, made visible so that we can see it, and drink it, and get life from it. He is the true Spring of the water, just as He is of the light.

Spring is the time of life and motion. The waters that have been bound in “icy keep” are set free by the warm sun, and the streams flow to the rivers, and the rivers rush to the sea. Everything that has been resting and sleeping awakes and moves.

The cause of all this movement is life, new life, coming into everything. Jesus is “the Life,” and so He is the real cause of all motion.

Look at the hands of a watch or clock, and you will see them gradually moving round the face of it. Although you cannot see what moves them, you know it is the hidden spring that is keeping all the works of the watch moving in perfect order.

Perhaps you think that you can move of yourself, because you are alive, but this is not so, for it is “”in Him” that “we live and move.” The very life that is the spring of all your movements is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of life which, we learned last week, in the beginning “moved upon the face of the waters.”

Every movement that has ever been made in this world has been because of the moving of this Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. Because of this moving of His Spirit, the waters flow, the plants grow, the birds fly and you are able to move and walk and run.

Jesus, from whom all things come, and whose life is in them all, is the hidden and secret spring that is keeping in order and harmony all the works of His great universe. Nothing moves of itself, because nothing has life in itself, but

“There lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God.”

When we think that we can move our selves and go our own way, this is what brings sin and trouble and confusion. So remember always that you have no life or power in yourself, and let Jesus be the Beginning, the Spring, of your every thought and word and act, and move you all the time in just the way that He wants you to go.

The Present Truth – April 6, 1899
E. J. Waggoner

Story in pdf  The Gospel of the Spring. The Real Spring