Anticipation
an·tic·i·pa·tion [an-tis-uh-pey-shuhn]
–noun
1. the act of anticipating or the state of being anticipated.
2. realization in advance; foretaste.
3. expectation or hope.
4. previous notion; slight previous impression.
5. intuition, foreknowledge, or prescience.

It has been gray here for what feels like many weeks. We have had lots of snow and rain this winter as well as just plain gray days. Everyone still seemed to go on with life but there was this lacking. Starting yesterday though the sun has burst forth! You can hear kids playing out side and the birds are fluttering here and there with their joyful songs. There are more people out even on the roads driving around. People are smiling and committing on the weather everywhere I go.
I was pondering all this as I ran errands this morning. I was thinking about this season of lent and how I long for Easter morning to celebrate Christ and the fact that He has risen and that He is not dead! This is truly a time in the church calendar of anticipation. Lent falls during the change from Winter to Spring it is so visual for my heart…death to life. A true season of anticipation…anticipating Easter, anticipating Spring and ultimately anticipating Christ return again. My mind and heart are taking all of this in during these last few weeks of Lent.
Continuing to ponder I think back to the gray that I have felt outside for so long and rejoicing in these sunny days…I feel that God truly invites me to seasons of gray. There are definitely season in my life that are hard and I wonder why and question and search…sometimes God shows me why and other times it is left a mystery. When the gray ends in my heart and the sunshine burst forth again in a new season I feel that I can enjoy dancing in the sun a little more as the gray was so gray and the sun is so bright. I can almost bottle up the sunshine and carry it with me remembering that there are different seasons and different times. Each different and unique but each stair stepping the other that God might mold me and shape me…that I might have more of His heart and not my own selfish heart.
The anticipation of Spring, of Easter of Christ return wells up in my soul! I l-o-n-g and yearn for these things in this season. I have had a taste of these things and I am so hungry for more!





