Where did the springtime go? Just a few days ago East Texas was a warm 80 degrees plus and the signs of spring were bursting out everywhere. The Tulip trees were already past their peak, the azaleas were showing color, and the daffodils, those sure harbingers of spring, were blooming in every field where they were the remnants of houses long gone. Now it is back to the forties and the radical change makes it feel like freezing.

Every season has its merits, but I think I like spring best of all. Perhaps because it hints of resurrection and eternity. It would be difficult to imagine what life would be like without hope. That is exactly what one faces without the resurrection.

In one of my dark moods of years gone by, I penned a poem entitled "Hope Is Gone." It is one of the most morbid writings one might ever read. I will not burden you with it here for fear of depressing your day. It was a time when I had lost sight of "the latter end," as King David would write of it in  Psalm 73. The cares of the world had almost suffocated me as Jesus described in His parable of the sower. I was in desperate need of a springtime!

God, as He always does, brought me one! I was speaking at a funeral and seeking to offer hope to others — even though mine had failed. An old illustration I had used in the mountains of Arkansas came to mind. I described the apparent bleakness, so reminiscent of death, which prevailed in the winter throughout the ruggedness of the Ozarks. The hardwood trees all appeared dead and there were no signs of life amid the rocky outcroppings of those bleak hills. However, with the first breath of spring, first the redbud trees and then the dogwood trees budded and blossomed in radiant bloom. Tiny flowers sprung from the cracks in the rocks and whole mountains burst forth with life! It was God's way of renewing the promise of our resurrection through His creation! And as I spoke, He renewed His promise within me! With a suddenness reminiscent of the outbreak of pring, my own spirit blossomed and bloomed as hope was restored.

Now, every spring, even when spring struggles to be born like this year, I wake to the promises of eternity and am revived. I may, with David, find some small comfort in the fact that the wicked will not profit in eternity, but the real joy comes from the fact that God has made possible eternity in a heart which otherwise would have remained hopeless. How beautiful the springtime of God in the hearts of His precious children!

So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD.
His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain,
Like the spring rain watering the earth. (Hosea 6:3 NASB)