The Spring of Life...

Being in France, i have come to witness an actual change of seasons.

Winter was horrible. The weather was cold and dreary. The trees were stripped of all their color so that only the true nature of the branches were showing, dark, brown, empty branches.
Winter seemed long and drawn out. I thought Spring would never come.

One morning i woke up early, got out of bed started to make coffee when i saw leaves. I thought to myself, wow, just like that leaves are out.

A week later trees were blooming, color seemed to be everywhere you looked.

Pink and White cherry blossom.
Dark Green New leaves.
Yellow tulips.
White Daisy.

It was as if God worked all night decorating so that i would wake up to a beautiful surprise!

One warm day Todd and I decided to go for a walk. As we were walking the Lord softly showed me through his stunning creation, that the season of our lives are no different than the season of weather.

Much like the leaves in fall, the things in our lives that are weighing us down that are not of God, things that produce no life, need to be stripped and removed.
Each leave must fall before the next season.

Winter cold, forsaken, and barren, in most areas this is when the sun is least felt. And it is often the longest of the seasons.
Our spiritual winter is when God is showing us who we really are. Naked, with nothing to hide behind. We may feel forsaken, we may feel as if we are producing nothing, and we may feel as if we can't feel the Son, and it may feel as if it will never come to and end.

One morning you wake up to tiny colorful sprouts. One morning you wake up with a sense of hope and perseverance. Knowing that winter is coming to an end and Spring is approaching rapidly. That if the dead leaves hadn't been removed, if it wasn't for the time of barrenness and nakedness, there would have been no room for the new life of beauty that Lord had planed for all along.

God was showing me that,
We MUST go through times of Winter, long, lonely, and as cold as they are, are necessary in order for new life to be brought out in us.

It makes the colors in our Spring that much BRIGHTER!