If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the color of hope is yellow. Of course, green is full of life yet to be and is the color that lets us know that winter is turning to spring. But yellow is the color that says “keep your eyes open……great things are on the way!” I say this with some assurance because I have spent the last few days being dazzled by yellow. Along highways and in yards throughout southern Ohio and parts of West Virginia and Kentucky, yellow is literally shouting forth hope, showing itself like a Vegas dancer. It is coming in the form of bushes and hedges of forsythia.

If this burst of yellow doesn’t get your attention, then the clumps of daffodils that sprout around the edges of houses whisper hope into the world. And if that weren’t enough, there is also clump after clump of these bulbs-cum-flowers that seem to spring up in open fields. I am not sure how that works. Perhaps a house once stood in this now open field or their brilliance was carried to the open expanse by an animal or bird. However they got there, I am thankful. Seeing this yellow, I became even more anxious for the full range of color that will soon, soon, be ours. In this winter that doesn’t seem to want to end, we are hungry for some change in the white, gray, black and brown that has been our visual palette for so many months.

Truth be told, I would have it no other way. There is something wonderful about knowing that we are a part of something much larger than our own personal desires. Seasons and the fickleness of weather can help put our humanness in perspective in a way that is not too life threatening. There are other ways that are not nearly as gentle or kind.

These seasons that hold us give us the opportunity to be present to the movement of moon, sun, ocean, air and earth. There is nothing we can do to move any of these in ways that directly benefit our wants or wishes. Of course, we have seen and are seeing the ways we have created circumstances that affect how these planets and environments are not working in the ways they once did. For the most part this is not a good thing. But the reality is we still live at the beck and call of the ways of Creation.

There are the seasons of the year and those of our lives. The wise writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes put it this way: “There is a time for everything,and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die,a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal,a time to tear down and a time to build,a time to weep and a time to laugh,a time to mourn and a time to dance,a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,a time to search and a time to give up,a time to keep and a time to throw away,a time to tear and a time to mend,a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate,a time for war and a time for peace.What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. God has made everything beautiful in its time. God has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

It seems to me one of the ‘burdens’ God has laid on the human race is to be awake to these seasons we travel, to pay attention to the ebb and flow of each season knowing that we may not be blessed to travel it in the same way again. This can create a certain ‘awe-walking’ that keeps each turn of the day, month, year, fresh and full of the eternity set in our hearts.

Since not one of us can fathom what God has done from beginning till end, I am betting on the color yellow to keep bringing on its hopeful hue. It seems the very least I can do.