Hope springs eternal!

It's such a funny phrase and yet it comes to my mind on a regular basis - usually each year in the depths of winter when I see something that sparks a glimmer of hope... that reassurance that spring is round the corner.

(Though I'm sure I'm mis-using the meaning of the phrase! I imagine the spring is an action, not a season!)

Yesterday it popped into my mind - quite unsolicited!

I was in the garden - putting food out for the birds - when I noticed two tiny little green shoots in the bare brown soil. We moved into this brand new house nearly 18 months ago and last year I started on a major project: building a garden. (I've still got the aches, pains, bruises and blisters etched in my memory.) The last planting phase was in October when I put in the spring bulbs... and yesterday was the first sign of the fruits of that work.

What was so marvellous was that the soil was truly like the line in the carol - "Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone". Yet these two little shoots had pushed their way through to the light!

Isn't that incredible!?!

The whole of creation has so many echoes and resonances doesn't it. Through all this time of bitter cold and darkness, new life has been struggling beneath the surface.

Our lives can be like that too, I know mine has been... In the long cold days of despair somewhere deep within me the seed of hope germinates and eventually bursts forth!