Aging Spiritually: Unrevealed Until Its Season
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Last week at FBC Decatur, we enjoyed a wonderful time of fellowship and inspiration as we sang old favorite hymns. I was asked to sing a favorite of mine, but the hymn I chose was a new hymn, not an old one. The hymn was In the Bulb There Is a Flower, (originally titled Hymn of Promise,) a hymn reflecting on the hope we hold in common, the hope of new life that comes from death. This is the hope of the Resurrection of Christ, celebrated on Easter Sunday and throughout the Season of Easter until the day of Pentecost.
The story* of In the Bulb reveals how our hope of resurrection shapes our lives, especially as we ponder the ending of our lives on this earth and our resurrection to eternal life. The composer, Natalie Sleeth, was a prolific composer of music for the church. She said she was “pondering ideas of life, death, spring, winter, Good Friday and Easter.” She also contemplated the poet T. S. Eliot’s line, “In my beginning is my end,” which she reversed in her hymn to read, “in our end is our beginning.”
The first stanza of the hymn describes the “hidden promise” we see so often in nature as bulbs sprout into flowers, seeds grow into trees, butterflies fly from their cocoons, and “the cold and snow of winter” melts away in the warmth of spring. Each of these is a natural metaphor of life coming from death, “unrevealed until its season.”
In the bulb there is a flower;
In the seed an apple tree;
In cocoons, a hidden promise:
Butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter
There’s a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.
The second stanza reveals her pondering the paradox of song emerging from silence, and dawn bringing hope into darkness. In a beautiful statement of faith she declares, “from the past will come the future;” even as she confesses, “what it holds, a mystery.” The hope of resurrection is a paradox and mystery to us, and “something God alone can see.”
There’s a song in every silence,
Seeking word and melody;
There’s a dawn in every darkness,
Bringing hope to you and me.
From the past will come the future;
What it holds, a mystery,
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.
Soon after she completed the anthem, her husband, Ronald, a professor of preaching and college president, was diagnosed with a malignancy. He asked that it be sung as a hymn at his funeral to affirm the promise of new life after death. In her grief at his funeral, she must have found hope in the words she had written in the third stanza,
In our end is our beginning,
In our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing;
In our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection;
At the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.
The new life of the resurrection is not ours to rationally understand. We sing in faith of that which is a paradox and mystery, of death and new life, of grief and hope, of the beginning that comes from our end. We find hope in our resurrection, “unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.”
-Greg Smith
*Howell, James C., Unrevealed Until Its Season: A Lenten Journey With Hymns (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2021), pp. 163-165.
Practice
Sing this beautiful hymn using this link to the tune: Search Results | Hymnary.org .
As you sing, ponder what these words mean for your own death and new life. Can you find hope in the mystery that is “unrevealed until its season?”
Greg Smith
Legacy Ministry for Older Adults