Spring Salad: A Wayfarer's Tale of Renewal

Spring Salad: A Wayfarer's Tale of Renewal

The spring of 2018 found me, Jonathan, in a sprawling refugee camp on the Turkish-Syrian border. As an aid worker, I'd witnessed countless stories of loss, but that season taught me about resurrection in the most unexpected way.

Our family, my dear wife Sarah and my two sons, Caleb and Ethan had joined me for three months. Resources were scarce, and fresh vegetables nearly impossible to find. The camp's dusty rows of tents stretched endlessly under a relentless sun, and hope seemed as scarce as the food.

Then came Easter week. A local farmer, hearing about our work, appeared at the camp gates with crates of fresh spring produce: tender spinach, asparagus, radishes, and wild strawberries from his fields. "For the children," he said simply in broken English, "New life."

Sarah gathered refugee women that afternoon, and together they created something miraculous-spring salads for hundreds. I watched Caleb and Ethan help wash the greens alongside Syrian children who'd forgotten what fresh vegetables tasted like. The camp's communal area transformed as families gathered around simple bowls of crisp, colorful abundance.

An elderly Syrian grandmother named Amira approached me, tears streaming down her weathered face. Through our translator, she whispered, "I thought I'd never taste spring again. I thought everything beautiful had died." She held up a radish, examining its pink-white brilliance. "But look, it grew. While we suffered, somewhere this small thing was pushing through soil, reaching for sun. God didn't forget about radishes. Maybe He hasn't forgotten about us."

Her words pierced my heart. Romans 8:11 suddenly came alive: "And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you."

Spring salads, those tender greens, crisp vegetables, bright strawberries they're not just nutrition. They're testimonies of resurrection. Every spring, while winter's death grip seems permanent, life is secretly stirring beneath frozen ground. Seeds split open in darkness, pushing toward light they cannot yet see, trusting in a promise encoded in their very DNA.

That evening, as our family shared our own bowl of spring salad in our tent, Caleb asked, "Papa, why does this taste like hope?"

I looked at those fresh greens, each leaf a small miracle of renewal, and understood. Spring salads remind us that God specializes in resurrections-in gardens, in seasons, in hearts. They whisper that even when everything appears dead, God is preparing new life beneath the surface.

Years later, back home, Sarah still makes spring salads every Easter season. We remember Amira, that farmer's generosity, and how God used simple vegetables to preach the gospel of renewal to a camp full of people who desperately needed to believe in new beginnings.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)