Lethargy mocks your attempts to work. Loathing nit-picks like a research tech. Anxiety bites off its muzzle. Depression bangs its tin cup on your cell bars.
Gaze out against the skyline. Can you see it? The edges of winter-bleached trees have taken on a haze of green.
Now look near you. One of those giant skeletons is beckoning. Go ahead, grasp a low-hanging branch, and the distant lime smudge will come into focus. New individual buds break out from their bony props in search of energy.
Clasp a twig of buds in your palm. How like a infant’s fingers they are, small and vulnerable still to cold and frost. Yet every digit extends fully to the elements in reach for the sun. Not long now the fingers will unroll their banners and wave you into Spring.
For as the rain comes down,
and the snow from heaven,
and do not return there,
but water the earth,
and make it bring forth and bud,
that it may give seed to the sower
and bread to the eater,
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
but it shall accomplish what I please,
and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out with joy,
and be led out with peace;
the mountains and the hills
shall break forth into singing before you,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
(Isa. 55:10-12)
