Spring??!!

I was just thinking the other day about all the reasons I love spring.  Beautiful blue skies.  Warm, but not too hot, temperatures.  Flowers.  Sunshine.  All the shades of green as the trees get their new leaves.

Now fast forward from those thoughts to this morning.  The sky is gray.  The wind is howling.  The current wind chill is a single digit number just barely above zero.  It's snowing! 

On Saturday, as I was packing away winter clothes and getting summer clothes out of their bins and back into the closet, it occurred to me that maybe I was rushing things a bit.  But I convinced myself that spring was here to stay and I carried on with that task.  Big mistake!  Now I need to go dig out a sweater or a sweatshirt!

In spite of it all, I do love spring.  Growing up in South Carolina, I always considered spring my favorite season.......dogwoods, azaleas, all the beautiful flowers and plants of spring.....how could I have had any other opinion?  Well, there was the pollen.  But that was just part of the deal.

Then we moved to places with completely different climates.  Like Colorado.  And Connecticut.  And Minnesota.  And I soon discovered that spring can be quite unpredictable.  And quite cold.  And I'm being reminded of that this morning as we are experiencing a quite un-springlike morning.  BRRRR!!!!

In spite of this crazy weather, I do love spring.  I love watching the plants and trees come back to life.  I love looking down across the valley below us and watching the "green line"  gradually make its way up to us.  I love seeing all the different shades of green that represent so many varieties of trees and shrubs. I've come to understand that spring comes slowly to this mountaintop.

And I love spring because it's a time of new life.  Because in spring we celebrate Easter, as we did just a few weeks ago.  Resurrection Sunday!  The ultimate expression of new life.  And so today, I choose to think about that......and not about the snow I see falling outside my window!

"And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and the life is in His Son.  He who has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life."                                    (1 John 5:11-12 ESV)