This Article Moved Me

I was just about to throw away the paper today, when I came across this article. As I finished it, I was fighting back tears. It has been a long winter here in Utah with record breaking "inversion" days and it was nice to read this and gain a spiritual perspective to all of this.

Winter turns to spring — eventually
By Jerry JohnstonDeseret Morning News

I write this column "in the bleak midwinter," looking out my window at a landscape that could be the moon. Even the evergreens are gray. And the sky looks like oil shale. "Wish hard enough — and long enough — and Christmas will come," my father used to say. You could say the same for spring. It's always around the corner. It's that hoping "long enough" that takes a toll. I'm reminded of several women in the Bible. Time and again a woman who is either very old, or considered barren, gives birth to a baby. And that baby, more times than not, turns out to be a leader. It happened to Sarah, with her son Isaac. Elizabeth, John the Baptist's mother, found herself in the same fix. But thanks to a miracle, someone who was thought to be infertile became filled with something living, warm and alive. The dead came back to life. When a thing like that happens once in the Bible, it's interesting. When it happens twice, it's worth remembering. But when it happens over and over, there is usually a lesson to be learned. And the lesson here, I think, is: Don't dismiss anything as being too dry or desolate to be beyond redemption. Heaven can bring things back to life at a moment's notice. The "big lessons" are easy to spot. People's faith in the resurrection of the dead comes to mind. As does the faith of a pioneering people who walked West into a wilderness and, with the blessings of heaven, made it bloom. But there are also "little lessons" — personal lessons — to be learned. The mother and father who feel like giving up on a child whose life has become a barren desert could take heart from Sarah, Elizabeth and others. Even the most withered soul can be made alive. And there are times each of us feels as dry as cork inside. But with patience and faith, a heart like a saltine cracker can become — in the flicker of an eyelash — something as sweet and tender as homemade bread. So, as I sit here looking out at the landscape like that guy in the song "Cool Water" (all day I faced the barren waste), I know in a few weeks all that gray will be green again and all those empty flower beds will be filled with color. Does the fact I understand the cycles of the seasons make the rebirth of nature each year less of a miracle? Not in the least. In fact, if I had a little more faith, perhaps I could see that the eventual "coming alive" of all things parched and arid can be counted on as confidently as the coming of May. I'm not quite at that level of assurance yet. But, as with Christmas, I keep hoping long and hard for it to happen. In the meantime, all those stories of barren women becoming mothers in the Bible, the stories of thirsty deserts that have been brought into bloom and the brittle lives that have become soft and warm — in short, all these bleak midwinter "moonscapes" I've seen evolve into spring — help me to keep taking heart in the hope that there is bigger more glorious spring awaiting us all. And that thought takes a bit of the chill out of the ice outside.