Spring has Sprung

 

As we have walked together now for almost a year, I’m sure you have come to know my love of this neighborhood and my deep appreciation of the neighbor’s love of lawn decorations. Year round, it seems there is always something playful and kitschy going on among the streets of this interesting place.

If you walk one direction on my own street, in a few blocks you come to a cul-de-sac. And in this cul-de-sac, a dinosaur lives. She lives here all the time, year round. And, this dinosaur is large. It stays in its place, the size of a small car, changing accessories as the seasons come and go. I like to check on the beast from time to time, making sure that through all the extremes of wind and weather the past lives. Like my own local Jurassic Park, it seems to connect us all to another world.

These days our neighborhood dinosaur is busy proclaiming that “Spring has Sprung”. And indeed it has. Beautiful sunny days and thundering light shows in close succession. Air conditioning running one day and heat cranking the next. Allergies and sunburned faces. Yes, Spring has Sprung.

What a gift to embrace another Spring and all that a new season brings. Hope for the return to a sense of normalcy. The chance to reconnect with family and friends. Opportunities to travel and be freed from the routines of the year. The ability to look back and see that, even in the hardest of times, there has been beauty and love.

Isaiah writes, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” My neighborhood dinosaur joins the Prophet and points us to the future and new things. “Spring has Sprung”, and I am ready.

Peace.