Sisters,
In order for summer to come, we have to live through rain, tornados, grey days, and high school graduation parties. Some of you will spend $300 on food for herds of kids you’ve never met who will troop through your back yard, inhale everything edible, and leave for the next party. Your adult friends, O Faithful Ones, will stay to help you clean up and haul the refuse to the curb. (Remember, you did the same for them when their kids graduated….it’s one of those rubber-meets-the-road-community kind of things.)
Some of you will spend hours picking up branches in your yards after every storm . Others will fight depression and sun-deprivation during those grey, rainy days. Still others will discover, horrors! all the rabbits in Wisconsin have come to your house and eaten the baby basil, tomatoes, and whatever else you so lovingly planted last week.
Hang on. Summer’s coming. Maybe you’ll be getting your basil and tomatoes at the farmer’s market instead of from your back yard, but it’s coming, nonetheless.
I remember countless Easter morning sunrise services….sleepy folks croaking out songs on the shore of Lake Mendota (or Lake Michigan back in our Chicago days). Arriving at the shore during the quiet of pre-dawn. Then, about a minute or two before the sun would rise over the horizon, the birds would suddenly take off and fly into the air. Somehow, birds know that, in a few moments, the new day is going to announce itself. They rise up to greet it. Of course, the poet in me rejoiced. It was like stones crying out and the earth rising up to meet Jesus in the sky! Like all of creation singing for the joy of His return. Glory and wonder!
And, the really interesting thing is, on those grey, rainy Easters (even a couple with snow and people huddled in boots and winter jackets), the birds still did their "rise and shine" routine. No shine, and they’re still rising!
Rise up, sisters. The sun is coming. He is rising with healing in his wings! If we choose to fly, whether we see the shining or not, we’ll be in the place we’re supposed to be. We will be rising up to meet Him. In expectation that He will come and do what he promised. That His word is true and His will is sovereign. Greater is He!
A place of encouragement for anyone waiting on the shore:
My dear friend Nancy Bergstrom – intercessor, hands-and-knees pray-er, and totally amazing quiltmaker/textile artist – sent me this:
www.webwomenconnect.com
It’s an online, daily, word of encouragement for women from women. You sign up and they send you an email every day written by some dear sister. Not by some famous person or theologian. Not by someone on tv. But straight from the everyday hearts of a bunch of scandinavian Lutherans from Minnesota! What a sweet thing for the unity of the body.
Maybe you would be encouraged to read this at the start of every work day. Maybe last thing before you shut off your computer every afternoon or evening.
Rise and Shine,
Julia