DEVOTION: April 3

It’s an unusually warm day for early spring and I sat on the porch with my face in the sun. The birds sang from the bare trees as the darned woodpeckers feasted on our house. Spring was in the air. 

But the trees were bare. 

Those trees that surround our house, tall and proud and empty, are my favorite kind of tree. They help me see the house across the street through a thin, limbed frame. They let me watch those singing birds as they serenade each other and (I pretend) me.

The trees were bare. 

A week later on the porch, days are longer, the sun setting later. I indulge in a book I put off reading far too long. Something in the story touched a tender place in my heart—a long buried pain I hadn’t thought much about in a decade. I put down the book to reflect. When the moment was over, I looked up:

The trees weren’t bare anymore. 

My view to the neighbor’s house was suddenly ensconced by fluffy white blossoms. The tree my favorite cardinal likes to visit unexpectedly has yellow-green blooms. The tall pines that sway in a summer breeze are bursting with a fresh, early green of spring like a horse bucking at the gate. My favorite kind of green against my favorite kind of blue.

It’s miraculous to me that we can live through such unexpected pain and adversity in life, yet live to tell about it. That we can walk through that valley of the shadow in a dreary, monochromatic daze. That we can be desperate for glimpses of that fresh, early green yet convinced we’ll never see it, only to be alarmingly reminded of it a decade later through black and white words in a book. That we can cycle through winters and deaths and springs and life, again and again, and continue to be renewed will never cease to amaze me. 

Without warning or fanfare, without announcement or glory, the trees aren’t bare anymore.

Renewal is coming, friend. Hold on to hope.

Where can you see glimpses of renewal in your own life? 

“When your soul is famished and withering, He fills you with good and beautiful things, satisfying you as long as you live. He makes you strong like an eagle, restoring your youth.” (Psalm 103:5, The Voice)