Spring-Song

The sweet air softens these love-lines around my eyes. Things that were once so important to me fade and the song of heaven becomes more real as the days grow brighter and spring steps in gently, like a doe in the clearing-wood. What is it about the changing of the season, about the passing of winter that affects me so deeply? Something in my blood cries out, reaches out in thirst like a third-world beggar. Is it spring I long for, or joy? And why does the spring put the Father-hunger in my heart?

I hear the birds call, singing still in the new breeze. They lift their voices tepidly, hesitantly almost at first . . . is the winter really over? Did they really make it through? The days of quick-falling dark, of ice-cold-air that breaks the spirit and the bones and hushes the strong and weak alike, the days of barrenness and skeleton-trees-- are they over?

The dove sits on the telephone wire-above, her placid wings tucked around her. “Oh, that I had wings like a dove . . .” The world is harsh; I long for the promised rest,  for the rivers of delight that await, for the peace-filling that will soothe my soul and pour balm on the wounds that never fully healed in this life. The healing waters and the trees . . .  and redeemed humankind free from their suffering-agonies and sorrows.

Joy, joy . . . the leaves of remembrance . . . the mist of myrrh where sadness has been soothed over with gracious balm.

I hear the phoebe-song, gentle laughter of delight, the murmuring trees just before their leave-crowning comes. Peace . . . not the absence of pain but deliverance from it. Joy . . . not the absence of sorrow but the holy restoration, the making of all things new. Glory . . . I see Jesus, sitting at the right hand of the Father--nail-scars-closed and spring all around. Winter is over. The trees burst forth their buds, angel-shaken. The creatures, birds and beasts walk without fear, the lion and the lamb together, the infant and the adder. Grace---my soul stirs, like wind in the waiting pines.

Healing, grace, renewal . . . the sun rises. And winter is hushed; the morning wakes. Men and angels singing glory. And spring laughs over my soul.