Happy Spring!

Awake, thou wintry earth –
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness! 

~Thomas Blackburn, “An Easter Hymn”

I love spring. Trees sprouting new leaves, flowers blooming, birds chirping and kids antsy to meet the new life that is springing up everywhere. I love driving down a windy street that is met at every turn with the sun blinking sunshiny hellos through the newly formed leaves framing its embrace. Spring brings promise of newness and awakening. Awareness that the earth and everything in it is willing to start afresh in sweetness and hope of greatness to come.

Kids know this spring feeling. They ache to get mud jammed between their toes. Push trucks through lush, fresh, green grass. Hunt for squirmy, slimy, fat, worms weaving in and out of mud and warm rain puddles. Kids know that all of this is to be embraced with joy and excitement. For it is the time of year to celebrate new life!

Rory would clearly describe her spring joys to be full of fresh baby hugs, bright flower pedals, and hand fulls of new and delicious food like spaghetti pie or warm muffins out of the oven.

Because in the midst of tired eyes and parental life forms threatening the outlook on life with mundane “oldness”, kids know its time to celebrate newness. Like baby cousins named Elliot:

Or other perfect spring time activities of chasing turtles. Eating rice crispy treats on park benches. Or blowing out candles for anyone and everyone celebrating the mark of a new year in their lives.

I was thinking the other day, why do we celebrate birthdays? Is it another hype for corporate America to gain a buck. No, its an opportunity, much like spring, to celebrate life; even if that life is well into the mundane of repetition and yearly predictability.  Birthdays are the opportunity to stop and smell the roses. To honor the greatness of hope and opportunity of a new year. Kids know this.

But another celebration of newness that is always in the forefront of my mind in spring is the new life we were all given so many years ago. Jesus Christ died on the cross for me and you to bridge the gap between a God who loves us and the darkness in our lives, much of which we choose, to be given way for newness.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead … 1 Peter 1:3

For a sprouting of grace that grows into a new life because of God’s love for us. Kids know this. Celebrating the loving act of the One who loves us most.

Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time.  ~Martin Luther

I love spring. I love warm rain showers that trickle away to give opportunity for fat baby robins to shimmy in puddles.

I love the opportunity to start fresh and to recognize the importance of celebrations; how those celebrations make us focus on something great that is continuing on in the world in which we love. Happy Spring!

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. John 3:16-17