I love spring. I love when everything that once looked dead is coming alive! I love new buds on trees, flowers popping up from the ground, ducks back at the pond and warmth creeping into the air. I love how predictable spring is. We know it’s coming. We anticipate it’s arrival and we aren’t disappointed. Well…maybe when it’s not warming up as fast as we would like. However, we know that summer is coming!
Winter, however, feels different. At least the end of winter. I love the first snow and the silence that comes with a fresh coat on the ground. It’s the end of winter that causes me to wonder if spring will ever come. I know in my head that it will, but my heart questions and aches and fears that it won’t. I hear those similar concerns in David’s Psalm.
“Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak.”
Psalms 31:9-10 NIV
I hear the anguish in David’s words. From our readings we know a portion of the struggle he went through in life, but we can’t know it all. He was well acquainted with grief, fear, loneliness and pain. And he still had hope. He believed in a God that heard his cries for help. In the pain of winter he trusted God with Hope for spring.
“But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me.”
Psalms 31:14-15 NIV
Dear God, teach us how to live with the hope of spring on cold winter days. When Hope is not present and it feels like we are loosing again, may you give us a vision of spring…of new life…that can only come from you. Fill our hearts with your presence. May we find joy and peace in the promise of your presence and power! Amen
Mandy
Sixty-six books in a year 