Sunday Afternoon Tea

The flowers are springing up, 

the season of singing birds has come,
      and the cooing of turtledoves fills the air.

Song of Solomon 2:12

There was something different about a morning this past week.  As usual, I pushed the button to start the coffee maker, took my thyroid medicine, and looked to see where Miss Victoria had parked herself (usually viewing only her back side as she's perched on the back of the sofa looking at the outside world through the curtains).  But this morning... what was it that I hadn't noticed before?

Birds... the predawn symphony of bird songs.  Oh, I'd seen many more birds and I'd heard them on my walk down the gravel road to the rural mailbox but this was the first morning I heard them singing before dawn.  I smiled as I knew (despite the weather forecast) spring had truly arrived.

My soul is beginning to come out of its' late winter slump.  As I wrote a dear friend recently, I've felt so far from God.  My Bible had not been moved in weeks and I'd not been able to read any devotional books.  I was dry and parched and it felt like the chill went through to my spirit.

My heart would cry out, asking Him what there was that had come between us... deliberate sin, unknown trespasses, unforgiveness, not dotting an i or crossing a t?

I believe I knew in my heart that it was none of the above.  Yes... it is true that one's heart grows cold as one does not read the Word or talk to Him.  Not due to some legalism or rule but having everything to do with the fact Christianity is a relationship with a real Person.  One grows further apart from anyone they do not communicate with...

It wasn't until I heard the singing of the birds and felt the warmth of sunshine as I gently worked the soil... pulling the old dead away to make room for new life with my rake... that nature helped me know.  My soul felt like that which was dead but I knew differently.  In truth, it was much more like the greeness of new life peeking up through the dirt.  It was coming awake after the long, dark, cold, difficult winter in which illness started in my flesh and affected my spirit.

As a young Christian, newly coming to know Him in the Jesus Movement, I heard those who were my age now talk about finishing strong.  I couldn't comprehend what they meant.  How could one who walked with Him ever become lukewarm... or worse... walk away?  It didn't make sense.

Until one walks many miles on life's journey and has had (what they believe is) one too many storms ravaging their path... winds and rain and hail and desert and darkness and loneliness and loss and the cold of winter and the heat of the summer sun... all along the path of their life.  As they journey from youth into middle age and then into old age, they feel they have been chewed up and spit out by Life.

Those who finish well come to understand that His mercies are new every morning.  They look forward to "the time of the singing birds".  They learn in their journey not to fear the cold but to realize they must keep walking the path until the time of refreshing begins.  In spite of how they feel... there is life within... His life.

Those who finish well do not finish perfectly, they will enter Heaven out of breath with bruises and scratches.  Only those who do not make the journey... or who walk away from it... do not show the affects of that walk.

Those who finish well know the crown does not go the fastest or the strongest... but to the person who crosses the finish line... who has not given up in the darkness of the winter days of their life. 

As life returns all around me... life is flowing back to the soul.  Spring has come.  I know I can finish the journey.