Spring, Easter bring joys of new life

When leaves begin to fall off the trees, I always have a slight sense of dread about the approach of winter. I imagine how brittle the grass will become and how skeletal the trees will appear. I grieve a little about what I will no longer see in the landscape.
What I forget year after year until winter comes is that there are special delights in the winter landscape. (If you live in the Coastal Bend, once every hundred years you have snow on Christmas Eve!)
In winter you can see farther and deeper into the landscape than when the trees are full of leaves and the crops and grasses are high.
One of the winter delights I enjoy is sighting the bird nests in trees bare of leaves. Normally, these nests are well hidden from the eyes of all creatures to protect bird families. But when the babies take flight and the families seek warmer climes, the nests they leave behind stand out like Christmas ornaments in the trees. It fascinates me that some trees have none, others have one and still others look like apartment houses.
I enjoy another winter delight that is peculiar to this part of the state, which is the sight of a peregrine falcon majestically perched on a high branch searching for its prey.
These big, beautiful birds come here for the weather that seems a lot warmer in winter than where they usually live. They seem so beautiful to me, with their big white chests framed against the sky, high above it all.
When the season of Lent approaches, I always have a slight sense of dread, because this season of the church year requires my looking farther and deeper into the landscape of my soul. What I forget is that the season of Lent also has its special delights.
Soul-searching isn’t all that bad.
Neither is the rhythm of the seasons we celebrate and enjoy.
By the time you read these words, winter and Lent will both be over. Signs of new life will surround us in nature, and in worship we will be singing “Alleluias.”
May we never take for granted the gifts that come to us in springtime and in Easter as well as the gifts of the seasons that lead us there.
The risen Christ be with us all!