Don’t you just love springtime? I can’t honestly think of any aspect I do not enjoy. The daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths are welcome indicators of a warming landscape. This is also the finest hour for redbuds, dogwoods, apples, pears, and all manner of trees displaying their gorgeous blossoms followed in short order by their Kelly green leaves.
Of course various wildflowers also begin parading through the woodlands featuring arbutus, bloodroot, Dutchman’s britches, bluebells, violets, azaleas, trillium, columbine, and more making their successive appearances. It’s hard to see all of these and not worship at least a little.
Many of these beauties also produce fragrances to delight our schnozzolas. The sweet smell of arbutus often announces its presence before we’ve even seen it. It’s also the time when lilac’s pungent perfume wafts over great distances. Even freshly mowed grass and newly plowed soil have their own invigorating aromas that have been absent for several months.
Spring also delights our ears with its various sounds. Feathered friends like vireos, warblers, wrens, bobwhites, and many others create a springtime symphony throughout the woods and fields as they croon their love songs to attract their mates. Grouse drum on fallen oaks while peepers liven up springtime nights. My favorite, of course, is the gobbling of the turkeys echoing through our valley’s ridges and hollows.
We can also feel the springtime as the warm sun bathes our skin. Soft breezes toss our hair as opposed to the fierce winter gales that tried to rip it off. For gardeners there’s nothing like the texture of moist soil to revive those urges to plant, and gentle spring rains combine sight, sound, smell, and touch to create a multi-sensory experience.
Not to be left out, our tongues also enjoy springtime fare. Morel mushrooms, ramps, spring onions, and newly laid eggs from hens just coming off their long sabbaticals all delight our palates while nourishing our bodies.
These delightful aspects of springtime facilitate many activities that we enjoy this time of year. Spring sports reactivate the athletic fields and hunters comb the forests for turkeys and fungi while photographers search out the beautiful blossoms. Landscapers spring into action preparing beds and plantings while growers sow their seeds for summer harvests.
What’s not to like about springtime? Although I enjoy all the seasons, I might lean a little more into this one for all of the above reasons. Of course it also includes Holy Week and Resurrection Day recently observed and celebrated.
In 1873, blind poet Fanny Crosby wrote what has become a favorite hymn for many Christians. Blessed Assurance reminds us of God’s secure promise of saving our souls and one day ushering us into His heaven.
In the second line of that song, we find the words, “Oh what a foretaste of glory divine.” Foretaste is another word for appetizer and how we all love them! They give us an idea of what the main course will be like.
Crosby’s phrase comes to mind each spring as I ponder the rich blessings all around me. Although she was referring to something a little different, and although she couldn’t physically see the beauty of springtime, she captured a little of how the current creation provides glimpses of what the main course of heaven will be like!
Even though our planet now suffers under the curse of sin with death, decay, and disease, it still reflects the infinite creative genius and artistry of its magnificent Maker. If a fallen earth is this fantastic, imagine what His new perfect earth will be like! The best things we enjoy now are all but appetizers giving us a foretaste of what is yet to come!
As we enjoy all the aspects of springtime, may they remind us of spring’s Creator and may they make us hungry for His Heaven.
Enjoying the spring, George