Spring is Coming!

Spring is in the air! Oh hallelujah! Today it's 48 outside, sunny with a light breeze, most of the snow is melted off and birds are singing...there's just that something in the air that lets you know that winter is giving up its icy grip, spring is surely coming.

March 2014, the grass just starting to poke through

I love spring. As my mother would say, it's one of my four favorite seasons! However, until I moved to Indiana I had never seen four separate seasons. As much as I have come to dislike the long and frigid winters here, I have also come to love the springs.

It starts with that breeze - not the icy, cutting, howling wind of winter that somehow pierces through no matter how many layers of clothes you are wearing, but the gentle breeze of spring. The breeze brings with it the promise of new life, warmth and welcome, and the reminder that nothing is forever - this too shall pass.

Suddenly you start to see hints of green poking through the dead and decaying layer of grass, leaves, and dirt left behind by all the snow. The trees begin to bud and eventually blossom into the delicate bright green of new life. Flowers push through the soil, renewing rain washes away the crud of winter, and the earth responds with warmth and growth.

After a refreshing spring rain, 2014

Next thing you know, grocery stores are populated with summer fruits like nectarines, plums, even watermelon. Clothing stores display their brightest summer dresses and nearly everywhere you go flowers of all sizes, shapes, and colors are worn. You can almost feel the energy and life!

Eventually spring's brightness and warmth will grow to summer's heat and the flowers will give way to the shade of towering trees. Hot humidity will make the air thick and hard to breathe, and as sweat trickles down our backs we will strive to remember what the cold of winter felt like. We will run in the grass and grow tanned from the sun, and after the sun has set we will sit on the warmth remaining in the earth and enjoy the cool of the day.

But this too shall pass, as summer's heat makes way for fall's rich colors and crisp air. The leaves fall from the trees, crops ripen and are harvested, and we trade our summer clothes for warmer knits to guard against the growing coolness around us. Eventually fall fades into winter, and all life seems to lay dormant, waiting for the chance to regenerate again into bright, beautiful spring.

Sept 2013

Winter may not have given up for good yet - after all, Indiana weather is fickle and constantly changing - but I have already longingly glanced at my collection of bright tshirts, shorts, and flipflops. There is a need for each season on earth, and each has its own joys and discomforts, but yet my heart yearns for spring.

Just like the earth's seasons, our life has its own seasons. Right now I am thankful for the many blessings we have been given, and learning to focus on the positives instead of the negatives of life. Probably by the end of this year, our season of life will change, and I look forward to what those changes will mean. I know that the God who created the world and reigns over its seasons also cares about the seasons of our lives, and will give us grace and strength to meet each of those seasons. I am also thankful that life is a journey through seasons, and that though life has many changes along the way, I know the One who is constant and unchanging through them all, steady as the waves of the ocean and strong as the Grand Canyon walls. Wherever we go, whatever changes in life, He is the same in every season.