I’d forgotten what it was like to be almost Spring.

Where I live in the tropics, we have seasons, but they are so subtle many people don’t even notice them.   Something is always blooming and the grass is always green and you hardly ever have to wear a jacket.

But my visit to New Jersey this week has reminded me of “almost Spring”.

It’s that time when the trees are still bare, and the grass is still brown and you’re ready to be done with winter.  The calendar page has turned to March and you know that a change is coming eventually.  It’s just not here yet.

If you didn’t know what to watch for, things could seem pretty bleak.  But look a little closer and you’ll see changes at the ends of barren branches, and little green blades of grass poking through the dry brown ones, and the tips of flower bulbs just barely pushing through the dirt.

It’s almost Spring.

Sometimes the winter seasons in our lives seem to go on and on.  Things are bleak and grey and dull.  No signs of change coming.

Unless you look a little closer

And just maybe you’ll see something beginning to happen, something beginning to sprout, signs that your days are starting to be just a little bit brighter.

I’m going to start watching for those little clues that God is leaving for me.  I’m going to start looking for signs that He is at work, that the calendar page has turned even if the circumstances don’t look like it yet.

It is almost Spring.

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance…  Ephesians 6:18

For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come…  Habakkuk 2:3

Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.   Luke 18:1