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We got a huge dose of winter when we were in Lake Tahoe a few weeks ago.  We sat out a blizzard that dropped a few feet of snow in one day.  I was trying to imaging living like that all the time, and what a different sense of the seasons you'd have in a place where that was the norm! Waiting for spring would have a real sense of urgency, would it not?

I find myself walking outside in late winter sometimes, carefully watching the trees for signs of budding.  I want that first sign that change is coming, that spring and life and color and warm are all about to happen again.  I've seen it a bunch of times and yet it is still exciting and life giving.  I can imagine that in a colder clime that anticipation would be vital to survival.  You couldn't endure winter without the hope of spring.  Each one of us needs to feel that hope and that promise of life.

Sometimes when I think of our life together, of our time in history, it seems the only real hope is the promise of God's fullness, that "springtime" when broken creation is restored and "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream."  We live in a time when there is winter all around but there is also a lot of spring breaking out as well.  There is good and bad, heaven and hell, all mixed together in the world.  So what do you think?  Are things leaning more toward spring or winter?  Are they getting better or worse?  Are we circling up toward the Promised Land or are we "going to hell in a hand basket?"

I think you don't have to look very closely to see lots of signs of spring!  We have at least opened discussions on the environment and on sexism and racism and a bunch of other -isms.  We're more concerned about the helpless, from mentally ill people to children.  I know, I know, we've got miles to on every front.  But sometimes we can choose which way to look, backward to winter or forward to spring.

Right now, as I look out my office window, spring and new life are everywhere!  We just labored through Lent and Holy Week and then celebrated the wonderful gift of new life on Ester, and you could feel the resurrection happening in our midst.

Thanks be to God for signs of Spring!

Peace to you,
David