For Wilshire Baptist Church
Spring has arrived. The signs are everywhere.
The lawn is sprouting fresh sprigs of grass along with every variety of weed, enough to prompt the first mow of the season. In the beds, daffodils are bobbing their yellow heads while a few pink tulips and purple irises are showing their colors. There are bright green leaf buds on all the trees and shrubs except for the pecans. They are always the last to bloom; they know there still is a chance for a freeze.
Just outside our windows, the doves have returned from their winter retreats and are roosting in the fern baskets hanging on the front porch. Yesterday afternoon a pair of sleepy garden snakes needed a nudge from the bottom of a flowerpot as I did a little backyard cleanup. And across town at my mother’s house, Frieda, the 60-plus-year-old turtle we found when I was about 10 years old, has come out of her hole in the back yard looking for food.
“All nature sings and around me rings the music of the spheres,” as the hymn says.
Spring is a beautiful time, a hopeful time. It’s always been my favorite season. But it’s also an unsettled time; a dangerous time. There’s heat one day and chill the next, and that can bring wind, hail and tornadoes. We saw signs of that yesterday evening as we walked the leaf-padded Spring Creek Trail in Garland, where redbuds and wisteria bloomed alongside pecans and cedars twisted and broken by recent storms. The roofers walking around yesterday on top of the house next door know all too well the damage that spring can bring.
Spring conjures a mixed bag of memories for me. My sister died in the spring on a sunny Easter week. I was first married in the spring, and many springs later a dismal diagnosis hid the sunshine for a while. And still, spring is my favorite season. It’s the season that most feels to me like God is at work making all things new.
As the same hymn states, “Why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King: let the heavens ring! God reigns; let earth be glad!”