Newly Sprung

Maybe it was the ten days I spent on the Mediterranean coast in February, but I wasn't craving spring yet when it showed up. The daffodils started smiling and nodding at me from the side of the road long before I thought to look for them. And the first violet? I didn't have to seek her out; she came to me in the fist of my favorite 12-year-old, and she didn't come alone.

The violets are everywhere, generously sprinkled outside my workplace, a pool of purple by the gate where I live. And I'm reminded of a God who gives grace upon grace. I'm not in survival mode; in the midst of chaos and clamor, I'm thriving. How many times have I heard it said, "He gives grace not just to endure, but to enjoy"? How many times have I said it to others? How many times have I grit my teeth and just endured?

But now by his grace I'm newly alive, facing greater challenges but somehow loving my life and my calling more than ever, convinced that he withholds no good thing.

On the Brain, Part II

The other theme in my mobile photo library.

More daffydills

When the carpet cleaners parked me in I made lemonade, so to speak, by taking a walk to the park. I asked this little tuft of grass to let me make a ring out of it, and to prove its undying devotion it complied, the whiff of wild onion upon being twisted and torn its olfactory equivalent to "Oh, happy dagger!"

A meeting in the basement? On a day like today?

I started blogging after I discovered the first violet this time last year and, as usual, couldn't keep quiet about it. For years that first blossom has become synonymous to me of our hope and God's faithfulness.

Last year the first violet caught me completely by surprise. This year my blogiversary came and went, followed by the first day of spring, and I've been keeping my eyes peeled. This has resulted in some clumsy walks and a discovery of quite a bit of dog poop in my neighborhood, but my hope remains deferred. No purple head peeks out by the sidewalk, the tree root, the bush.

Still, my hope is in Him and He's faithful, whether or not those sweet little reminders appear. Silly of me to look for the sign instead of the source.

Anyway, spring seems to have arrived without the violets.

First Day of Spring

"Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection,
not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time."
- Martin Luther

"Daffodils were sunbeams in a previous life
and will be lemon cupcakes in the next."
- me

That Darn Thing with Feathers

"Hope is the thing with feathers," chirped Emily Dickinson, "that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all."

There are days, good days, sunshiney spring-is-here-at-last days, when I sing hope's praises alongside Emily, as well I should.

There are days, grey days, drizzley winter-may-stay-forever days, when I want to strangle the thing with feathers to silence its incessant song.

You irritate me, little bird. You tantalize me with your promises and frighten me with your risk. You're unabashed, Emily says, by the sorest of storms or the chilliest of lands, but I'm not interested in storms or chill; I'd rather stick cynical thumbs in my ears than be lured out to sea by your sweet song. Emily insists you've never asked a crumb of her. From me you demand my final meal. You're not safe, you unassuming feathered thing, and if I sing along, I may be disappointed.

But sing I must, like it or not, because I've read the Book and I know the outcome and I see that I am called to join the chorus because I'm loved by a God who doesn't just offer a hopeful option or wistful thinking or blind optimism but is Hope, my only hope. To run from hope is to hope in myself, and that's a chilling thought if ever there was one.

He does promise, after all, that those who hope in him are never disappointed, and of course it's true --how could he ever disappoint? It's the "in him" that makes the difference, since he's the one, the only one, who never fails.

That's the pitch I'll tune my heart to.

Sooner than hoped.

But definitely not daffodils.

Winter may remain for a time, but rejoicing comes in the spring.

Daffodils are not far off.

Hope Gratitude

So, the whole regular-or-even-daily posting on gratitude leading up to Thanksgiving didn't pan out quite like I expected, but here's a late one to roll us into Advent.

"I suck but there's hope." That's how some friends and I summed up our lives tonight. It's the Gospel in a nutshell - I'm depraved and helpless, but hope is found in the Cross, in the Christ who doesn't just offer something to be hopeful for but becomes our hope.

His kind of hope isn't the wistful thinking we're accustomed to, the I-hope-I-win-the-lottery optimism that knows all along it will be disappointed. His kind of hope is a sure thing, a promise that we wait for while knowing it's already kept. We have hope that we aren't stuck the way we are, hope for redemption, for the resurrection that cannot be unless death comes first.

The curse of Babel in Genesis 11 is followed by the promise of blessing in Genesis 12. The writing on the wall -- that we're mortal, that we don't measure up, that our false hope will crumble in our fists -- is followed by lions shutting their mouths while Daniel prays and a pagan king opening his to praise the living God. And even as God pronounces to Adam and Eve the dreadful consequence of their sin, he is promising to send the only one who can defeat it.

Like their children and their children's children, we rest in and long for the Savior who came and who is coming. "He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found" -- in every corner of the world, in every corner of my heart.

Sunrise

Good morning, old friend!

I hated time this morning, hated the floor that met my feet, hated being awake and alive, but then you came along, filtering rosily through the branches outside my east window.

The birds have been singing for hours, but did they get louder when you joined them? Like the child who thinks all grown-up company comes just to see him, they welcome their big shiny playmate.

Few things are certain - fewer, perhaps, than I once thought - but you never fail to greet me, hand in hand with each new day. I'm beginning to think, just maybe, that this one holds something worth getting up for, after all.

Indeed

We never hunted Easter eggs as kids. Mom and Dad hid jelly beans instead, and it still makes perfect sense to me - who wants an egg? Hardboiled eggs are only good in moderation, but hiding fried eggs would be impractical, and plastic eggs are just silly.

So Easter egg hunts are a new experience and usually make me miss jelly beans tucked between the black keys of a piano, jelly beans hidden amidst the cobwebs of a candlestick or a pottery vase, jelly beans frantically tossed into my basket before the selfish siblings could get them.

My community split up in different homes for “family meals” and then gathered at an open field for a (mostly) grown-up Easter egg hunt. Having no sense of nostalgia over scooping up garish little not eggs containing what I’m trying not to eat, I was unmotivated. But I didn’t want to be a bad sport, so I ventured into the field and before long began a different sort of search.

Our field was generously sprinkled with violets. Soon I was so engrossed in picking them that a green plastic egg hidden in the grass startled me. Violets are significant to me, after all, and on a day like today when we celebrate new life in Christ nothing could be more appropriate to hunt.


The scent of a violet is elusive - I have a distinct memory of being a kid of five or six, perched atop the slide in the backyard with my nose buried in a bloom, trying to take in as much of its perfume as I could. Maybe my sense of smell is aging, or maybe Kentucky violets are shyer than their Yankee cousins, but this spring it seems I can’t catch a whiff of anything.

The collective fragrance of today’s bunch, however, is filling my room. They smell like childhood days spent in a Wisconsin backyard, my imagination my playmate. They smell like happiness and hope.

Which reminds me of how much I enjoyed gathering with various expressions of family today.

• At this morning’s service my joy was increased by celebrating my risen Savior surrounded by others whose hearts hold the same hope - hearts that have become linked to mine.

• Shortly afterwards I marveled at the Gospel story as seen through the eyes of three-year-olds. (When talking to one wide-eyed little girl about Jesus dying on the cross, she asked, “When? Last week?”)

• Then I joined with a slice of community made up of friends old and new, savoring the mutual hospitality of a potluck meal, lingering in conversation long after we’d eaten our fill, sharing the burden of cleaning up when we were done.

• And Resurrection Sunday will culminate with a long-awaited Skype date with one of my dearest heart-friends. We’re separated by land and sea and time zones but share a similar quest to display His splendor as we keep His hope alive.

Together truly is better.

First Violet

This morning I discovered the year's first violet.

She wasn't a very brave violet, probably because she was alone. She had hardly opened up, and I almost missed her crouching there by the sidewalk in Missy's front yard.

The first violet of spring is like a gift to me. Some years I look for it, going from house to office and office to car and car to classroom with my eyes for once in the present, scanning any patch of grass for a glimpse of purple. Other years, like this one, the first violet sneaks up on me, startling me with hope.

Every year the violets come. Every morning the sun rises. Some winters seem to last forever, but eventually snow gives way to sunshine every time. And my God is forever as sure as the dawn.

I know I ought to let them live full, happy lives, but for years the first violets have found new homes between the pages of Psalms or Hosea or Song of Solomon. Today's violet may read less truth on her wallpaper, but it seemed fitting to slip her between my hand-written ramblings of hopes deferred, of promises certainly coming but yet to be fulfilled, of longings that linger like a Wisconsin winter.