This is the day the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoin in it!
All winter long, I have prayed that Psalm, often through gritted teeth. OK, God, I get it, you made the snow and ice, too. Enough already! Spring is coming, but not yet to our corner of south-central Iowa. I do understand that it will come eventually, but tend to get impatient along about now.
For the last few years, I’ve learned a little about being nice to myself. Just before I reach my limit, I head south six hours to mid-Missouri for a week.
The weather is about two weeks ahead of Knoxville. There is more green here, not abundant yet but enough to give hope. That’s what I start to lose each year as winter drags on.
I go for a week and then come home refreshed and able to wait it out with the rest of my Iowans.
I sit outside (outside!!) with a light jacket and begin my morning prayer routine. But I stop and close the prayer book.
This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!
That is the only prayer possible as I see green, tentative and sparse, but green. We drove down here from a land of snow and fog and now I am in sun and green.
There is a robin in the yard. I watch with delight. People have spotted robins in Iowa before I left, I know, but I could not see them.
Thanks for this respite and for my sister who makes it possible.
Help me remember that spring does always come, that even colder Iowa has birds of your creation, if I but quit griping and remember to look.
Amen.
