--
Snow . . . wind . . . sleet . . . ice . . . cars crumpled and off the road . . . planes staying put . . . snow plows that can't keep up . . . power outages and people trying to stay warm--that's one story on the news today.
Clashing mobs . . . anger . . . rage . . . demands . . . tanks in the streets of Cairo . . . Molotov cocktails lighting up a night darker than dark . . . bullets firing in the air, at least for now--that is the other big story of the day.
There are a host of other stories too.
None of them hold out hope for tomorrow to be better than today.
So where can we look that will not drive us to distraction or depression, or both?
Is there anything right with the world on this very turbulent day?
Is anything alive?
Is anything good growing?
When I was a little girl, it was snowdrops--beautiful white flowers that would bravely push their lovely heads up through the powdery British Columbia snow, heralding that spring really would come! Even in the loveliest of winters, there comes a time where everyone is sick of short days and shades of grey and white and the sickly brown of last year's dead grass. What a welcome sight to see those tender bits of green leaves and stems that accompany the new-whiteness of the snowdrop's head-bowed flowers!
It always amazed me that under all that snow, inside the ground that was frozen rock-hard, life was erupting before you could even see anything. And then, as the flowers started to climb up and up, what was it that made them push defiantly on through inches of ice crystals, hard and jagged, and so cold?
Well, there are no snowdrops here in this part of California, but the daffodils do come awfully early by midwest or Canadian standards either one. While all the trees are still bare, except for the occasional tenacious autumn colored leaf clinging against the wind, I stop in my tracks to marvel at these soon-to-be daffodils rising out of the ground, full of life and promise.
The flowers aren't here yet, but they WILL come. Even in the dormancy of winter, the promise of spring cannot be suppressed for long.
Here it is--evidence that life still lives!!
Goodness is still good!!
And snow drops and daffodils still grow!!
When the bleak, the barren, the tragic and the wicked threaten to convince you that goodness is dying, rise up in a defiant shout of praise and declaration:
"I am still confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living."
Does the darkness in this world ever discourage you?
How can we really live in light of God's goodness, no matter what?
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Joining Emily Wierenga for Imperfect Prose
