The coming of spring is a change we anticipate and welcome. After a cold winter, we rejoice in longer days and warmer temperatures. And as the snow begins to melt, we watch for splashes of color and for those first brave blossoms. But perhaps it’s more than good weather we’re looking forward to—it’s the abundance of new life and new hope offered in spring.
Somehow, the hope of spring can make it easier to believe in unseen realities. Yet even in spring we may grapple with discouragement, despair, or anguish of soul. Like Job of old, we may sincerely wonder, “If a man die, shall he live again?”1 At such times, when we need new hope, when we yearn for the nurture of charity, we might find seedlings of faith in our own souls.
Almost in an instant, the trials of life can strip away the superficial and help us discover who we really are and what we really believe. C. S. Lewis said:
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? . . . Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.”2
Sometimes only in the winters of our lives can we truly appreciate and believe in the miracles of spring. Like children who run through grassy fields in search of hidden eggs, adults too can search and find new life and new hope as we turn our hearts to God.3
1 Job 14:14.
2 A Grief Observed (1961), 25.
3 See John 17:3.
Program #4098