The Fall of Spring
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. Gen. 8:22
Perhaps it is some failing of perception on my part, but I do not note so great an antagonism between the other seasons as I do between Winter and Spring. It seems that Summer is willing and cooperative in amending its boundaries and behaviors to make room for Fall. Fall in its turn obediently wraps up its work and readies the place for Winter. It appears to me that it is Winter that has (recently?) become the bad actor. It clings! It will not give way
This morning, I am looking at a weather projection. It appears automatically on my computer homepage. I am pleased to have it. What draws my interest today is the extraordinary expectation that it sets for tomorrow. Will it really be 93 degrees? Perhaps Winter has finally surrendered.
I have experienced a lot of Springs. It seems to me, though, that things have changed. My childhood memories are of the last lacy snowflakes gently floating down until they gain an uncertain purchase upon the windowsill. They remain there all pristine and lacy until the steadily and daily intensifying noon sun morphs them into tiny puddles. It is a harbinger: a promise of days to come where the harshness of Winter will yield in small orderly increments to the bright colors of Spring.
I lately suspect that Winter is no longer as resigned and compliant as early memory recalls. It is a good deal more combative in the transfer – reluctant in yielding to the inevitable outcome. It is bent upon establishing a line which it cannot hold. Spring, when it breaks through, doesn’t gently “come” now – it “falls”.
There are injured parties: We have two kinds of magnolia trees in our front yard. Though different types they share an irrepressible inclination to burst into bloom with the first signs of increasing warmth and sun. Every year we admire their beauty and hopefulness. But we mourn for them as well. We have come to know that Winter will counter-attack. Spring, when it finally retakes this ground, will find them brown and defeated.
We have a bird feeder at the edge of the little woods that fill most of our backyard. It contains small seeds, and its patrons, appearing in early Spring, are mostly diminutive. Jackie and I are both amused and sympathetic when viewing a scene that now repeats annually. The little visitors gather around their apparent leader. We have no depth of understanding of “bird” but we can tell that they are unhappy little guys and are conveying their upset to their captain in very rude terms. They are up to their little feathers in SNOW! This was not in the brochures!
Our lives unfold before us as seasons. I am a couple of months older than my sweet wife. We are both now closer to 90 than 80. We have known the growth and beauty of spring and the warmth and pleasures of Summer. We have reaped the harvest of the Lord’s plantings in the shortening and beautiful days of Fall. We have lived many years in the bright sun and shade of our Father’s mercy and grace. Their can be no doubt about it though; we are now experiencing a bit of Winter. How could we bear it except for the promise of Spring? God help us all to be patient and joyful! Glorious days are before us. They shall dawn neither early nor late. They will come by the power and promise of a loving Father, and they will be right on time!
George Moore
Elder Emeritus
