DIRTY SNOW

Most of the winter snow is gone.  Most of it.  Ok, all except the large mounds created as a result of snowplowing along roads, edges of driveways and parking lots.  The winter soaked grass has made its appearance - a sort of moldy, strange, muted and washed out puke green of sorts.   I both love and hate this tail end of winter.  I love the hope that seeing grass again brings, longer hours of daylight and birds singing more than in the preceding months.   But, I hate it too as there is this awkward, almost pre-teenish stage the earth moves through until it gets to full spring.  Ugliness.  Dirtiness.  It seems that warm bright green will never sweep away the filthiness of winter's mark.  The book of the prophets prophecy of God's newness after destruction, after misery, after waywardness, after oppression, after captivity, after dirtiness.  My own life follows suit to spring and to what the writers of the book of the prophets talk about - God making new things from old, dirty, in bondage, ugly stages of my life.  I've had quite a few tail end of winter stretches where the longness drug on and on.  I thought about my life since June 2010.  There have been some big piles of dirty snow that I thought would never melt back to Spring.  But, they have.  God brought His goodness to the drab, the puke green.  He restored joy, brought laughter to sorrow, gave me a deep desire and longing of my heart.  Spring came to me.