April Showers Bring May Flowers - Homeword - March 31

April Showers Bring May Flowers

This devotional was written by Leslie Snyder

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. —Ecclesiastes 3: 1

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?

Pilgrims!

This favorite kid’s joke has been around a long time. It never changes. It’s always corny but year after year around springtime, this joke surfaces and kids’ faces light up every time they tell it to someone. Knock-knock jokes are the same way. Here’s my favorite.

Knock-knock?

Who’s there?

Panther.

Panther who?

You’re panther down, better pull them up!

I laugh every time I hear this joke, and laugh through it every time I tell it. Again, like the Pilgrim joke, the punch line never changes. It’s 100% predictable, but it makes me laugh every time. Spring is also a lot like a good knock-knock joke. You know what to expect every year, but like an anticipated punch line, it brings great joy whenever you experience it.

Whether it’s the return of the songbirds, the presence of robins in your yard, the burst of color from tulips, daffodils, and other flowers that have slept through the winter, or the gentle rustling of the new leaves on the trees, spring is a glorious time of new life and new hope. It brings with it an unexplainable joy. The writer of Ecclesiastes recognized the timing and seasons of life. He said there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

Aren’t you thankful that spring returns every year? How dull, hopeless, and dreary life would become if not for the promise of the return of spring. A life without spring reminds me of the fantasy city of Narnia in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Witch has taken over the land of Narnia and has turned the land into perpetual winter. Life is frozen in time and the promise of new life is gone. Fortunately for us, we have the hope of new life and each spring we get a glimpse of just how beautiful that new life is.

Today, turn off the TV, grab your family, and get outside to take a walk or bike ride, or play in the park. Notice the signs of new life all around you. ‘Tis the season!

GOING DEEPER:

1. Take some time today to enjoy the newness of life all around you. Thank God for His goodness.

2. Be a source of new life to someone today with the gift of a smile, a kind word, or deed.

FURTHER READING:

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8; Genesis 1; Genesis 8:22

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