Spring Has Sprung...

"Elizabeth Barrett Browning said, 'Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only those who see take off their shoes.' Oh that we would be a people that walk barefoot in the dew dusted grass."

This is actually a quote within a quote from a precious missionary friend who has given her life to serve and love Jesus and to invest His love within a city and nation on the other side of the world. I could read what she writes all day long and never get weary of it. What a gift she has and such wonderful things to say to the world about her faith and her love for the people God has sent her to. Her description of spring makes me wish I could write something so beautiful. You can see for yourself. Here is an excerpt... Last year when we moved into this apartment it took me months to get used to how loud it was at night with the window open. The S-Bahn barreling through Hakesher Markt every 7 minutes, taxi after taxi whisking down busy Oranienburger Strasse - just 50 yards from our front door, and of course the joyfully exuberant tourists singing their way home at 4 in the morning. Tonight I sit somehow soothed by the noise of the city with my window open for the first time in months, not because I need it to be open, but because it can be. I have opened the front door of my building for the last two mornings and been met warmly by the springtime air. I search the trees everyday for a blossom, so far I have been met only with the promise from the bud. There is an energy in the city, the euphemistic snow is melting and we are coming to life. The tables have been pulled back out on to the sidewalks and the restaurants sit empty while their waiters scurry from the kitchen in the far back of the building to the table practically sitting in the street. There are more smiles, an easier way and we are all relishing this month that we have before the tourists descend on our little Utopia. Spring seems to bring with it hope. The promise of new life. The reminder of restoration and growth. Isn't it strange how a season can speak to that little place in us that longs to be reminded yet again that life should be lived fully alive, breathing deeply of the crisp air, remembering that like the flowers blooming around us, the stuff that was bundled up in us underneath our winter coats and scarves has also been growing and prepring to make its brilliant debut with the Spring rains and Summer sun?

Written by ~Stephanie Johnson

I love words that bring so much life. Words that fill my senses like a summer breeze near the honeysuckle.