The Hope Of Spring

I sit staring out the window on this April morning, taking in the thaw. My ears pick up the continuous drip-drip of the gutters outside as they carry away the remnants of winter's presence. Spring has been early this year...as if somehow God knew I needed this reminder...

Even though the physical melt is over a month ahead of normal, for some reason this soul-winter feels like it's been too long. As if I've been praying in the heart-spring since the start of the year and welcome it with an unusual gratefulness. And I don't think I'm the only one. 

A few weeks back, well before the temperatures had risen and the snow had begun to fade away, I drove by the local park and noticed some hopeful soul had placed fake tulips in the still-tall snowbank as if the will the springtime here sooner. Maybe their winter had been hard, too, and placing some color in the whiteness was their way of believing. 

After you've endured the hard-cold of the heart-cold, somehow you embrace the promise of spring in a new way as if to remind yourself that hope isn't gone. As if to tell yourself that this is God's way of helping you to hold out until better days come. As if to say through the world of nature that renewal is on it's way and the redeeming of all things dormant and life-less will happen soon enough. 

Spring where I live isn't the most attractive time of year. Unlike warmer climates were spring means blooming bushes and green grass and sundresses out of the closet, everything is bare and brown and kind of ugly for a few weeks while the snow melts....almost as if there's this waiting period after the waiting of winter. But then, when the days turn warm and a few showers moisten the earth, it's as if the trees, the flowers, and the lawns - everything - bursts into a glorious green...a sort of hallelujah after the frozen emptiness of months past. 

Living here makes me appreciate the springtime more because I have to wait with expectation for any sign of new life, for any sign of resurrecting. Tree-branch tips are ever-so-slightly coming forth, making me smile because I long for any evidence of hope right now. For any proof that God is turning all this ugly into beautiful. And somehow, the little things like the squirrel shedding its winter coat, or the birds discovering their mating calls and the woods alive with the sounds of a sort of waking up from the dormant - all these are helping me find my own song again. As if I've lost the way to praise over these last weeks and months and I need these creatures to tune my heart once more. 

Grace reveals itself in the things He has made so that nothing created by His hands has any excuse not to bless or to worship. Because He made all this for His pleasure and, when we lose sight of the fact that we're not put here to do our own bidding, we lose our purpose in the midst of all this mess: to bring glory to Him alone and to enjoy Him eternally. The creation knows this. But somehow we forget. Oh God, forgive us. 

It's Easter weekend, and I'm celebrating the fact that God turns all the ugliness of sin, death, despair, and darkness into eventual redemption. The grave was His forever-proof of this truth. When He stepped from that grave on the third day, He showed humanity that there was hope and that the worst things are never final. God always wins. And the simple fact that the Gospel is yet changing lives to this day shows that He's not done yet. 

Sin-evidence is everywhere. This we know. We feel it breaking us down in many ways each and every day. There are signs all around us that this world is not as it should be. That, in our first parents, we destroyed ourselves and thus needed something, some-ONE outside of ourselves to save us from ourselves. 

For this reason, He came. And for this reason, the cross stands triumphant.

As I look around and breathe in deeply this outward resurrecting of all this ugly, I pray it into my heart as well: Lord, I need a springtime in the soul. Winter has held its grip for too long, and I'm tired. Take away the coldness, and replace it with a filling of life and hope. May I become warm and tender and thankful once again.