Thank you for joining us!
Before we begin our devotional, I wanted to share a Comment Highlight from last week:
On our devotional,
commented:Despite no snow yet this winter (a snowless New England winter is the saddest of winters), I know it's still months until the spring peepers emerge. I love every season, and try not to rush any of them, but this odd winter, with everything naked and bare and longing for the coverings of snow, is really testing my resolve.
This comment really got to me, Cari, because the Pacific Northwest is very similar! Our winters can be so long, wet, chilly, and gray (and often snowless!). We’ll hold on together and we’ll make it through to the green!
Cari writes a beautiful Catholic-based slice-of-life newsletter here on Substack called Trees of the Field. Check it out!
If you want a chance to be featured in next week’s Comment Highlight, all you have to do is post a comment on any of this week’s posts or threads. That’s it!
Now, on with this week’s devotional…
rumors of snow swirl around us and we hide our heads but the daffodils have sent green spears of life up and up and their roots are deeper than the snow can reach and strength is green I think and alive and deep for God has made it so; and as it is so am I.
This is the season that tries our patience, making us feel spring-crazy while sending us mixed signals. For example, we have snow in the forecast for next week, just when I was starting to feel more confident about planting the rest of my early seeds.
Oh well, so it goes.
This is the season that makes me think of all the goals I couldn’t help but set in January, the new habits I couldn’t help but seek, the dreams I already hoped would stir in the soil of my life, of this new year.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve had a few false starts already.
And you know what? That’s okay.
This is a week when the stores will convince you that you can buy love, affection, and romance off the rack. But we all know that it isn’t so. Love begins with an inner gentleness, a desire to heal what is broken within ourselves. It is a process. It is kindness born of grace.
Go easy on your false starts, your turmoils, your backslides, your dreams that haven’t sprouted yet. Some things take a little longer to incubate, that’s all.
If the snow falls next week, it will fall on budding branches, rising daffodils, and green wayside seedlings. But it will not crush them, not completely.
God bless the false starts, the cold surprises, the late frosts. God bless the slow beginnings. God bless the backslides.
Creation knows all about false starts. And she grows anyway, just as her Father taught her to do.
Thank you for reading!
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"Strength is green, I think, and alive and deep, for God has made it so." Wonderful thought and a much-needed truth to cling to in this "longest of months." I remember eons ago, back in high school, hearing a recording of Dylan Thomas reading his own poetry, and I recall a grand total of one line of his: "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age." I realize the rest of the poem is gloomy but I don't care: I take that line (reassuringly) to mean that God has also made us resilient, and stronger than we might think we are.
My soul needed this message something fierce today. Thank you ♥️