Hope springs eternal

"Nature's first green is gold."--Robert Frost

As we carefully inspected our flower garden on Sunday, we saw the first indication that winter is almost over: little sprouts of green coming up through grey-brown skeletons that are our only remnants of last year's flower splendour.

I saw that blush of green in my dead flower bed and my heart beat a little faster. I wanted to shout my joy to the blue skies: the white witch is dead! Aslan is on the rise!

But wait. I'm not Lucy or Susan and I don't live in Narnia. And I'm not that much of a fantasy fiction geek. Well, sort of I am. And for 6 months of the year around here, it feels like the white witch of Narnia has cast her spell on us all. It's dark and it's cold and some days even a trek to the mailbox feels like an impossibility. After a couple of months, it's hard not to have all that bad weather start to work a little craziness on your psyche.

You begin to forget what it's like to be outside. You forget what it feels like to have the sun warming your skin or how the wind sounds when it rustles the leaves on the giant trees. All of the warmth and joy and pleasure that a blue sky can bring fades so quickly when the grey sky of winter takes over for her season.

And yet, on days like these when I put on my short sleeves and walk barefoot to the mailbox, all the joy and happiness ahead of me feels better than Christmas morning. There's picnics and rollerblading and evening walks and flowers waiting for me in the months ahead.

On days like these I can even be grateful for winter, for even though I grow weary of her, winter reminds me how grateful I am for spring. And those little growths of green in my garden. They remind me that no matter how long the winter, spring always comes.

And with it comes hope.

So, my deep thought for the day is this: no matter how dark and cold the winter, spring always comes. Always.

Amen.