The first day of Spring is my Born-again Birthday. How lovely is that, I ask you!?
It seems I have been on a second honeymoon for most of the month of March; and I confess our Wyoming weather was SO WONDERFUL last month that I had not one tickle or itch to spend time in front of a monitor. Hopefully, this was true for you as well, dear sisters and brothers; and you aren't too annoyed at my rather extended leave of absence.
When you have wandered (like me) empty, angry, and fearful in the desert 40 years before you let God interrupt your Damascus Road Disastrus, your spiritual birthday becomes far and away more significant than that old physical one. So celebrating this merciful event just as the first bud and blade turn blessedly green is my first gift from heaven each year.
The greatest joy of Spring is how it so sweetly, so superbly, so equisitely reveals the final, victorious scene in The Hope of Our Salvation. From parks and pastures of dull, dreary, seemingly dead soil spring the first miraculous promises of flowers, fruits, and fragrances. My faith in an invisible, gentle, piercing Power to ever renew ME grows newer, stronger roots each an every first day of Spring.
As I gaze out an open Bible fellowship window, I'm reminded of that old Mac Davis muse to "Stop and Smell the Roses." And in the next moment, on a whisper-soft Spring breeze, I hear from the Holy Spirit of our Risen Lord,
"You, my dear ones, are their roses."
It seems I have been on a second honeymoon for most of the month of March; and I confess our Wyoming weather was SO WONDERFUL last month that I had not one tickle or itch to spend time in front of a monitor. Hopefully, this was true for you as well, dear sisters and brothers; and you aren't too annoyed at my rather extended leave of absence.
When you have wandered (like me) empty, angry, and fearful in the desert 40 years before you let God interrupt your Damascus Road Disastrus, your spiritual birthday becomes far and away more significant than that old physical one. So celebrating this merciful event just as the first bud and blade turn blessedly green is my first gift from heaven each year.
The greatest joy of Spring is how it so sweetly, so superbly, so equisitely reveals the final, victorious scene in The Hope of Our Salvation. From parks and pastures of dull, dreary, seemingly dead soil spring the first miraculous promises of flowers, fruits, and fragrances. My faith in an invisible, gentle, piercing Power to ever renew ME grows newer, stronger roots each an every first day of Spring.
As I gaze out an open Bible fellowship window, I'm reminded of that old Mac Davis muse to "Stop and Smell the Roses." And in the next moment, on a whisper-soft Spring breeze, I hear from the Holy Spirit of our Risen Lord,
"You, my dear ones, are their roses."
