Winter Has Ended

Today is for me a vivid reminder of all that slumbers during the cold and bleak times, when all seems dark or lost or hopeless or lonely or silent or uncaring. Beneath the covering of dead and moldering leaves, beneath the sheen of tenacious frost, behind the apparently lifeless gray sticks and clumps — life itself slumbers.

May the Giver of all life bless us with a strong sense of His presence, and may we expend our energies in following our own unique God-given paths, and less energies in worrying about the jackals that howl and bark from the underbrush on either side.

The world is awakening from its slumber. Let us rejoice as it stretches and yawns. Step outside and listen…do you hear the birds? The wind in the high treetops? The spring peepers down in the marsh? The scrabble of squirrel paws on damp bark? That is the rousing of the natural world. And to hear and sense it is a pure, pure gift.

~ S.K. Orr