God,
I stand amazed at your ongoing life-giving power. All of those dead brown branches we pruned cut back all the way to the nub. We expected we would have to replace them, of course. But for so many of them, already the green shoots are pushing through the ground, straining toward the sunshine, drawing on the energy that has been lying dormant in the earth. It is truly amazing.
I confess that there are days I feel like those brown branches, dried up and brittle. There are days I wonder if there is any new life available in me or for me. There are days I think the freeze damage on my heart is irreparable.
But not today! Not today, God! Today, I read that you are the vine and I am the branches and that your Holy Spirit is the living sap that flows into my heart and life. Today I can feel the new sprouts of life breaking through the crust of my heart to strain for the sky so that I might “soar we now where Christ has led.”
Today, I give thanks for your ongoing, incredible, eternal life-giving love and power. Thank you for giving me new abundant, and eternal life right now. In the words of one of my favorite Easter hymns, Now the Green Blade Riseth, penned by John Macleod Campbell Crum, born October 12, 1872,
When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Jesus’ touch can call us back to life again,
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.
Amen.