The Spring after a long Winter

I've been pondering a lot lately. The Spring always does that to me. We have swung from 6 inches of snow on March 1st to 70 degree days and sunny to wet, cold and rainy today. But the earth knows...

Somehow the earth knows Spring is on the way...

I love God's design. My mother and I were talking just this morning about the first time newborn babies take a breath. Everything that has to work to change that new tiny little human's body to obtaining and placing its own oxygen rather than its mother's is phenomenal. And everything that has to go right to make it work correctly is mind boggling. Someone designed it. Had to. No way it was a mistake.

This Winter has seemed very long to me. Perhaps it's the season in life I find myself in. I feel like I'm so easily discouraged right now, and bad news comes in all the time. I'm not just talking about the news, though that in itself is enough to make me swear off media. So many people I love dearly are ill or are going through serious 'desert' times. And I'm intensely loyal... if something is happening to a friend, it's almost as bad, emotionally, as happening to me.

And yet, Spring is on the way. I can sense it as clearly as the earth senses it's time for the daffodils to begin pushing through the earth in their quest for sunlight.

The subject I've been pondering is Heaven. My eternal home, my dwelling with God. I read a short devotional on I Corinthians 2:9 recently, and thus began my thoughts. "However, as it is written: No eye has seen, nor ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him." I don't know about everyone, but I have always had a very active imagination. Always. I can't tell you the number of times I got in trouble in 2nd grade alone for daydreaming. Anyway, point is I can imagine some wonderful things that God has prepared. But 'no mind has conceived'... So, it's better than the endless hikes through green meadows and rugged mountains searching for waterfalls and never getting tired or meeting an animal that would frighten me. (especially snakes or spiders) It's better than a neverending bowl of vanilla bean creme brulee with raspberrie coulis. It's better than hugging my Mom and Dad after a long absence. It's better than the day Daniel asked me to marry him. Better than all these and millions more combined.

I was driving a couple of weeks ago with my window down, the day I read the devotional on I Corinthians 2:9, and was singing at the top of my lungs with a Vanilla Mocha Frappaccino from Starbucks. It was glorious. Divine. I saw birds singing, the flowers were beginning to bloom on the Bradford Pear trees, and they looked beautiful. And I thought, There can be nothing more wonderful on earth than this.

That's when I got that little whisper; this is the inkling we get here on earth. Heaven is like the Spring after a long Winter. Only so much more... Come, Lord Jesus.