The Seasons

I was re-reading "The Last Sin Eater" last week and I came across this quote that really made sense to me. Cadi is thinking about what her Granny used to say to her before she died.

'I remebered how we'd sit on the porch, melting and waiting for the hot summer day to end in the relief of nightfall. I the thankful cool, we'd stare up into the infinite black sky with glitters twinkling while the lightning bugs sparkled like fallen stars in the woods round about us.

In the fall, Granny'd send me off to capture one monarch butterfly from the thousand that migrated. She'd hold the jar a long while just looking at the pretty thing. "From a worm this came. Don't that just beat all?" And then she'd take the top off the jar and watch it flutter away.

First frost had been an event to Granny Forbe, for with it came the high mountains gold and the soft winds that stirred up blizzards of red, pink, orange, and yellow leaves swirling. "The maple's always last to give up its color," she'd always say. The maple that grew near our cabin was like a red blaze against the encroaching winter skies, its leaves like crimson spraks on the dead brown ground.

Granny would sit by the window during winter and look out ant the snow heaping or watch the icicles' slow growth fromthe eaves of the front porch. They'd catch the sunlight and cast a rainbow radiance. Granny was ever hoarding bread crumbs and sending me out to toss them about near the window so that she could watch the towhees, titmice, red cardinals, and the mourning doves foraging for the bits of food in the vast white. During the ice storms and the long bleak nights of winter, she'd tell me mountains were like sleeping giants that'd come awake again soon. "God'll see to it."

And God did. Those mountains always did wake up, without fail. Year after year, the earth came back to life again with what Granny called "God-green." She always said no matter how much you watered, you couldn't get the same color that came with a single rain if the life-bearing water of heaven.

Now I knew why it happened that way, what Granny was trying to show me in words she didn't have. It was no accident, no coincidence, that the seasons came round and round year after year.

It was the Lord speaking to us all and showing us over and over again the birth, life, death and resurrection of his only begotten Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord. It was like a best-loved story being told day after day with each sunrise and sunset, year after year with the seasons, down through the ages sinse time began.

I knew after hearing the word of the Lord, I'd never walk anywhere again without seeing Jesus as a babe in the new-green of spring. I'd never see a field in all its glory without thinking how he lived his life for us in the royal robes of evry summer wildflower. I'd ever see the greatness of his love in the beautiful sacrifice in the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows of fall, and winter white would always speak to me of his death. And then spring again, his resurrection, life eternal.

" Lo, I am with you always." '

This part about the seasons just really made sense to me.