Last week as we were bundling up from the cold, I kept trying to remind myself that we were just about four weeks from the Spring Equinox, that magical moment when the Sun crosses the Equator moving ever so further north. Of course, as Galileo pointed out, it’s not the sun that moves but the earth, tilting on its axis.
Our days continue to get longer with, sunrises earlier and sunsets later. Even in the cold of last week, small signs of the coming spring began to appear. Tiny buds are just beginning to come onto trees, and even the Heliotrope shows signs of life.
Easter is late this year so rather than facing snow in late March, we can look forward to a spring with flowers. This coming week even the temperature will be more springlike. A reprieve, we hope, and time to consider more deeply what is happening around us as a Nation and how to really start to rebuild a society that has more spring than winter.
Prayer for the Day
Now as we have earlier sunrises, opening our eyes to your light,
Help us to look through the windows of your majesty;
Bring us a new vision of your world, full of possibilities,
As we seek your guidance to work for your kingdom.
Awake in us, O God, your promise of redemption,
And help us to witness to your righteousness.
In the name of the One who shows us the way,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
So often we think we have got to make a difference and be a big dog. Let us just try to be little fleas biting. Enough fleas biting strategically can make a very big dog very uncomfortable.
Marian Wright Edelman, Children’s Defense Fund founder
Best of all s to prepare everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving and for every breath a song
Conrad Gessner, Swiss naturalist and botanist (1516-1565)
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is God who sits above the circle of the earth, its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, spreading them like a tent to live in;
Who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
Isaiah 40: 21-24