I am looking out my window into a winter scene of snow and trees with no leaves, bushes with no flowers. The deer come in the night to raid the bird feeder of its nuts and seeds. It’s cold, cloudy and dark. Doesn’t sound real hopeful or cheery, does it? Yet I know, as soon as the snow melts it will have some green grass underneath it. If we look, those same trees and shrubs, bleak as they are now, will show the color of new green leaves just under the surface. The redbud trees will have their pink blooms just ready for the right conditions to come along so they can explode into spring color. When I checked on the forsythia, it too is waiting to announce spring to launch yellow in its grand display. 

I would like to have these views now but I have learned you just can’t rush spring. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:” Ecclesiastes 3:1 Solomon knew what he was talking about.

 21 Yet this I call to mind
    and therefore I have hope:

22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

-Lamentations 3:21-23

The crocus will come up as the harbinger of new life soon; the sand cranes and the blue herons will come back to the river banks and start fishing. The orioles, the redwing black birds will arrive. New songs will fill the air, if we listen, and life will begin to start back to normal.

This is the promise of March. Thank you, Jesus.

  Grace and Peace,

   Pastor Mark