Today’s featured article is written by Richard D. Stafford, Ph.D.
As I write this article for Now Habersham, I am looking out my window and see Mt. Yonah off in the distance peeking up over the northwestern horizon. On this day, the second tallest mountain in Georgia appears almost purple against the brilliant winter blue sky. A few clouds float by here and there, and its unusually warm for a February day, about seventy degrees. There is a hint of what’s coming in seven weeks, or so, and I like it.
But I know, there are many more cold and freezing days ahead before spring arrives in Habersham. Oddly, against the spring-like feel of the air on this particular day, I see the wooded area surrounding our home. The trees are stripped of leaves, bird’s nests I saw last October have fallen out of the trees and disappeared, and the floor of our little forest is tan, brown and russet, and it seems life has run away to warmer places.
But I know the seeds are there, down there somewhere. The sap is just resting below ground in the roots of the seemingly barren trees. The squirrels, possum, and that mountain cat I spotted back in December have not vanished. The moles didn’t dig down to the center of the earth, lost, never to return. And I am certain that hundreds of Daffodils are perched, ready to awake, arise, alive in a few weeks, announcing spring is in the air.
But today, how do I know? How can I be sure that these teases, predicting warmer days, are not far away? How am I assured that those yellow finches, the blue indigo buntings, the fire flies will come again to this wintry world I see today? I turn on CNN and the same grey bleakness splashes across the screen, from one country to the next, one life to another, and so I turn it off. I need hope. I need hope that God will breathe everlasting life into all things, once again.
I just need one tiny bud…of hope.
Ephesians 5:14
“Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you.”
