Spring is my un::favorite.

The least of the favorites.

Although there is always something I favor in each season God gives: flowers anew, mud puddles, cool lake on a hot day, ice shining on the trees, pumpkins rolling down the hill after Thanksgiving is over.

{Thanksgiving::: never over}

But I with the voice of thanksgiving… +Jonah 2:9

But Spring: it’s the un:favorite of the favorites, despite the creeping green seeping across the renaissanced Earth.

I do not know why::: really.

I never hasten Winter to leave me.

The cold is when I feel alive in my skin with snowflakes on eyelashes and bundled close in my scarf and I feel the wind on my cheeks and see the world washed white and the sleeping earth rests and I breath in fresh and crisp and listen to the silence loud in the trees and soak in the woodfire crackling and adore cozy nights in pajamas after a long day chilled outside…

I like the blanket swaddled warm on our babies and the lights dimmed settled on the couch for movies and popcorn and me and tea and books while the branches sway and creak outside in frigid air and snowy darkness and I imagine everything quiet in woods and animals nestled and how stars are crazy- visible: bright and burning on nights like these: everything sharp and arctic, raw- beautiful and invigorating…

I am comfortable in Winter. When things are hibernating a bit.

Kind of not moving and not hurrying.

Torpid like the turtle with its head in the mud at the bottom of a pond.

Sleepy like the bear who fattened himself up and dozed off in a dark den somewhere.

In the North where I live, Winter is comfort to me. I prefer it.

My boreal blanket wrapped soundlessly about me in my tiny no-green-light- town in the woods to keep me warm and comfortable.

Spring.

Spring::: Well, Spring expects something.

Spring wants water running and thirst quenched and rays beating down hard on fallow ground:::

Spring says Wake Up and Get Up and bloom and grow and ripen and rise and thrive and build and flourish and burst and stretch and…

Abound.

Whoa. Spring. Hold up.

I like some slumbersome Winter.

Nothin’ too radical like that, Spring.

Like breaking ground and shooting up leaves from a seed carcass laying on dry ground.

That.

That is hard. Takes energy. Lots of it.

{by your endurance, you will gain your lives. +luke 21:19}

Strength. Lots of it.

{…be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. +eph 6:10}

Trust, too. Like that there will be enough water and the Son will shine bright enough and the growing will be painful but for the good anyway. To break out like that.

Bold, buoyant and believing.

{blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord… +Jer 7:17}

Spring::: you are a new adventure that I can have faith in, aren’t you?

Winter::: you were nice and quite snug, thanks for the rest, for the refresh.

I have to go, though. This is a new beginning.

Because that is what He says.

{The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge… +proverbs 1:7}

Abound.

Abound in good works.

Abound in love.

Abound in faith.

Abound in belief.

Abound in grace.

Abound in mercy.

Abound in forgiveness.

Abound in Him.

{and maybe a little rebound, too? He is right there waiting…

…For the Lord will not forsake His people; He will not abandon His heritage… +psalm 94:14}

Let’s abound in Him.

Growing and flourishing and rooting ourselves deeply in all of His promises.

Oh, the gift of that.

And while we enjoy His gift of growth, we can keep looking forward…

to the season of His

Harvest, too.

Until then,

Let’s rejoice together.

In our Springtime.

“Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together…”

+Jesus