Spring!

Happy spring, everyone! Here in Detroit, the sun is out, the piles of snow are gone and the sap is making sticky rivers on its way down the trunks of the sugar maple trees.

For me, though, the sure sign that spring is coming is when I see the first crocuses peek their heads above ground and give us some of the year's first color. So in tribute to these very small but very brave flowers, I'll share a reflection I wrote last year about this time on some of my favorite harbingers of hope:

Pick a symbol that represents who you are becoming in Christ;
or
If you could be a flower, what flower would you be?

Winter in Michigan is long and its hold on us is deep. It is bitterly cold, often windy and the sun rarely shines. The snow that blankets our world in white quickly turns brown from the dirt of our lives. Muddy piles of crusty snow accumulate along the roads and ice coats the sidewalks, making a simple stroll around the neighborhood a slippery, inconvenient and sometimes dangerous journey. By early March, we are so hungry and so needy for warmth that we'll roll down the windows in our car and parade around in shorts the first day the temperature goes over fifty degrees. In spite of spring's valient efforts to arrive bringing warmth and color, winter's nails dig deep and it will still snow well into the late part of March making us wonder if spring might forget to come alltogether this year.

But every year as I'm walking along bundled up, I'll see a flash of purple or yellow peeking through the patches of snow on the ground. I'll look closer and see a crocus, the tiny, colorful flowers with grass-like leaves that are the first flowers to bloom in spring. Crocuses are amazingly resilient flowers. They bloom at the first touch of warmth and can withstand the snow, wind and rain even after they've pushed through the ground. I welcome their presence on my late winter walk with a grateful smile and return home with an extra jump in my step, knowing that despite the bitter wind and the cold that lingers, spring is on its way.

I traveled to Staten Island, New York in March of 1999 on a mission trip in college. My favorite picture I took during my stay was a picture of the first crocus I saw that year. We were working at a church that had burned down in a fire, helping to clear away rubble so the construction workers could build a new sanctuary. The crocus I saw was blooming under a broken crate, making its home among the rubble and ash in the side lot of the church. I instinctively new that this flower was symbolic and I am so grateful I took that picture.

I love that picture. And I love the crocus. I love these tiny ambassadors of hope, these little touches of beauty blooming from the ashes, these splashes of color among the grey and the brown.

I have a lot I can learn from crocuses. And I know that as I continue to watch and pray and connect to the Sower of every good seed, I, too, am becoming an ambassador of hope, a sign of beauty growing from the ashes, a splash of color among the grey and the brown.

I hope you find your own "crocus" today and it makes you pause, reflect and smile.