These are the days to be vigilant. To keep our eyes and ears and all our senses open to the change that is slowly arriving. There is a palpable shift in the air around us. If you breath deeply as you make your first morning step into the outside world, you can smell something happening. It is the scent of ‘what next’. Full of wetness and earthiness and hope, its scent lingers in your nostrils. The scent is accompanied by a different slant of light. The Sun seems closer, more vibrant, as if it has tremendous work to do….which it does. While we humans may have messed with our created timepieces and moved an hour ahead over the weekend, the Sun is doing its work without need of anyone naming its light, its intensity, its beauty. It is simply doing what it has always done and will continue to do. For those of us with sensitive skin, it is time to ramp up on the sunscreen usage!

Yesterday morning as I sat in the semi-darkness of early morning, I was startled by the loud, honk of returning. Two large geese flew right over our house, low enough for me to catch a good look at their improbable, flying bodies. Their honking greeting seemed to say: ” Hello! We’re back! Did you miss us?” And then later in the morning, I was walking out of the church and coming in the door was one of our dear ones who also flies to warmer climes in the winter. We greeted one another with hugs and laughter saying….”It must be spring!” It was good to see both human and bird for seeing them signaled a change that is coming.

As winters go this one has not been bad. There have been cold days, yes, but we have not seen the snow we so often do. That precipitation has made its way to other parts of the country this year. But winter has a way of running its course and the inevitable turn toward spring is always welcome regardless of the severity of winter. It is a guest whose face we never tire of seeing at our door.

There is a grace that lives in spring that calls to some of the deepest parts of us. It is the new life that we thought was perhaps impossible. Because, if we are honest, it is the cold and frozen places in our lives that we think might never change, might never warm to something different. In truth sometimes we want to hold onto those frozen places, keep the cold, hard thoughts, feelings, opinions, beliefs, just as they have always been. It is easier that way. After all change is difficult, growing is often painful, and courage can be in short supply. To remain in the wintry places only requires putting on a few more layers of protection and nothing ever need change.

But there is a seed that was planted within us by the One who breathed us into being. It is a seed that has provided for the grace of all that would call us to our fullness.. And this requires the painful and beautiful work of letting go, of reaching up, of melting, of changing,of growing. While we often forget this seed, it becomes visible to us in the change of seasons, in the movement from winter to spring. It does not happen over night. It happens slowly, with metered intention. It may arrive in the semi-darkness but longs to live fully in the brightness of daylight.

These are the days to be vigilant in our watching,in our acts of being awake to the slow work of God in our midst. Piles of dirty snow are melting back into the Earth. Green is emerging from white. Buds are itching to burst open. There is returning all around. Within it all there is an eternal message that calls out to us asking us to take stock of those places within that are begging for the warmth of the Sun, those places that are hoping for the grace of change.

On this emerging day, may we have the capacity to see and hear and taste and smell and feel the gifts of all that is arriving.