Intertribal Life Newspaper -

Spring’s glorious production opens with a chorus of geese flying north, in perfect V formation, over melting ponds and running streams breaking free from their icy strongholds. Mallards quack to each other in sharp staccato tones as they establish mates and nesting sites. Gulls quibble in high pitched notes as they vie for morsels shared by sun-seeking humans. Red-breasted robins arrive, adding their melodic songs to that of the chickadees, sparrows, jays, starlings and redpolls that have braved the winter months.

Frogs begin singing “ayiki, ayiki” in nearby wetlands, while newborn calves bawl for their mothers and bleating lambs romp and play in the fields. It is a wonderful time. The soft “woo ooh ooh ooh ooh” of the mourning dove invites me to sit in the sun and enjoy a morning coffee, and the cricket’s familiar, and somehow comforting, chirp fills the warmer night air.

Quiet breezes whisper through newly formed leaves, and then intensify as lightening cracks and thunder booms out loud percussion rumblings amid rhythmic rain watering the land. Our Creator orchestrates it all into a rising crescendo of hope. “See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.” (Song of Songs 2:11-12)

I am writing this in February and it is 30 degrees below zero. Winter is harder for me than it used to be. I have watched the small birds at the feeder and remembered what Jesus said: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26) I see their feathery down coats fluffed up, but I still don’t understand how they survive in such cold. It is a miracle of sorts.

I look forward to spring and the joy I will feel when I can walk outside without my coat. Sometimes I need physical wonders, like spring, to remind me that Christ’s promises are true. He lives and He loves us—even in winter, and that is something to sing about!

© Sue Carlisle 2013. Sue Carlisle is a member of the Ponca tribe and spent much of her youth on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Her passion is to encourage people to look at creation and see our awesome Creator.