Christian Life As Springtime And Joy

"Our childhood [in Christ] again brings the freshness of morning, and we live in perpetual springtime, always young, always mild, always new, but always growing in maturity. We are the children carried on the shoulders of God. [quoting Clement of Alexandria] 'Our life is a perpetual springtime; because the truth within us cannot be touched by old age, and our whole way of living is saturated by this truth' (paed 1.5.20.4). Our relation to God as children in Christ is one of joy, of divine or mystic sport….For Clement, man is, by definition, a rational laughing animal (8.6.21), Christ has turned all sunsets into sunrises and Christian life is a season of ever-renewed springtime. A fragment of his instructions to the newly baptized exhorts them to cheerfulness: 'show always that you are a partner and partaker of Christ, who shines the light of God from heaven. Let Christ be to you continuous and unceasing joy.'" (Eric Osborn, Clement Of Alexandria [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008], 245, 276)