This morning I woke up, sat up in bed a little and peered out the opening in my window shades. I confess. I groaned. I groaned because the tree limbs were laced back up in white and the yard was all covered in snow, and I was thinking it should be spring. Warm, green and growing spring.

But, no sooner had I groaned when this sing-songy voice came rollicking back into my head. The voice of my momma when I was little as she was trying to teach me that each day was a gift and that I could give thanks and still find the good in things. The voice that would say,

“Remember! This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice, and be glad in it!” (from Psalm 118:24)

Yes, she’d say it and I’d roll my eyes.

Yes, now that I’m a grown-up, I still hear that voice and those words and I know it’s more than just changing my perspective about another day that didn’t match up to my expectations. It goes deeper than that. It’s choosing, in the moment to recall to mind how my life is indeed, actually quite good and quite easy.  But that even in a good, easy life I still have to decide whether or not I will look for and find God’s goodness in things.

And it’s knowing that if I can’t find good here, while the day is bright, how will I survive the tough dark times?  If I’ve strengthened that muscle in my heart that says, “Yes, I will rejoice, right here, right now,” then perhaps I’ll be a little stronger when adversity comes. Because in this world that groans, adversity does come.

Later in the day, I send the kids outside, lay Samuel down for a nap, and then tramp out across a melting lawn, looking for spring. At first I just find a couple of wildly happy kids. The boy with the runny nose and the girl with the chocolate on her lips and I push them on the swing.

I think about how we all ache for spring. How all the God-believing, Jesus-followers identify that ache with an understanding that God is making all things new.  It’s why we keep going, even though we keep messing up. Because Jesus can take a sullied heart, wash it white as snow, and He does it over and over again with the dawn of each new day. Every time we confess our crud and ask Him.

And it’s why we can keep getting up, even when we fall and fail.  In His Word, we find that age old belief that though we fall seven times, we will arise. (Proverbs 24:16)  Because Christ is in the business of renewing fallen, failing folks.

And all things becoming new is what gives us the courage to forgive, though our enemy offends us seventy-times seven. (Matthew 18:22) This belief that love can cover a multitude of sins and that the power of that unrelenting, faithfully forgiving love can transform a wretch and help a blind man see.

Spring speaks to us about the Kingdom. And the King who brings dead things back to life. Whose Spirit nudges the slumbering into wide-awake living.

I go out looking. And I find.

What was dead, lives.

What was asleep, awakes.

What had fallen, rises.

It’s what spring proclaims, even now, in this ground that groans.

There is a redeeming King. There is a righteous Kingdom. And there is this for those who choose to believe– all things becoming new.