An encouraging word

By HOWARD COOP

Surely, you have noticed! It is so obvious! Who could not see it? 

Everywhere, everything around us is changing.  Almost every day the world we know looks dramatically different. According to the calendar hanging on the wall beside my desk, winter, with those cold and dreary days, is behind us. Warmer and more pleasant days have arrived and not one day too soon. Red-breasted robins are singing, the grass is beginning to grow, and spring flowers with all their beauty are blooming.

Nature, dormant for a long period of time, is coming alive, and signs of the arrival of spring are visible all around us. As Maltbie Babcock wrote in 1901, “All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.” It is a wonderful time of the year, and most of us rejoice. We are tired of winter, and with genuine gratitude, we welcome spring wholeheartedly.

The sun has reached the vernal equinox. It is at its meridian height. In its annual journey northward, it has crossed the equator and days and nights, for a very brief period, will be equal in length. Then, the days will begin to get noticeably longer than the nights. Spring, with all of its beauty, has finally arrived. How wonderful it is! 

That’s something for which most of us look with great anticipation, for spring is a time to cast off the heavy garments of winter and clothe ourselves with more comfortable garments for the warmer and more pleasant weather that is ahead. Now, that’s something toward which we can look with immense pleasure, high hope, and great expectation. 

But spring is more than a time to rearrange the wardrobe; it’s time for a real new beginning. To make a new beginning, one must evaluate life and make some necessary changes by laying aside some useless and unnecessary things and taking on some good and useful things that will make life better. With that evaluation, a new beginning will have real meaning.