It snowed today. Again.
When winter stretches into April, the cold seeps deep into your bones and spring seems an unlikely promise.
These are the days I long for the sight of bluebirds.
It was a February few years ago that I saw them. It had been a difficult fall. Several important relationships had been cut out of my life. My finances were stretched to the breaking point. I was aging and so was everyone I loved. Disappointment after disappointment had rounded the curve and camped out in my yard.
I knew God was capable of fixing any one of those circumstances, yet it felt as though He remained detached. As he usually does, though, God revealed that He did care and had felt every bit of the hurt I had been through. I moved forward with a sense of hope that God was at work even when it didn’t seem like it. Gradually, the pieces of my heart were healing back together.
But after a time the enemy, as he usually does, was assaulting with doubts. Meandering across the hills of Dad’s farm while a fine drizzle misted barren trees, I wondered why I had been feeling better about things. None of those situations had really changed. Finances were still stretched. No broken relationships had been restored. My job was exactly the same. The future stretched like the landscape – gray, dreary and lifeless
Then a flash of color appeared in the hayfield. A pair of bluebirds perched in a hedgerow. Their bright blue feathers, with a splash of red on their breasts, stood out in stark contrast on the barren trees.
God’s joy is like that. It is completely out of place. Even when the world all around seems dismal, God’s joy flutters in our hearts. I saw those little birds and knew it was right for me to feel hope that day. Not because of foolish optimism but because of certain knowledge that spring will arrive.
Should you see a bluebird today, do not try to explain it, simply embrace the joy it brings.
“These things I have spoken to you that My joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full.” John 15:11
