It’s Groundhog Day and Puxatony Phil saw his shadow this morning. Bad news: we’re facing six more weeks of winter… No surprise, especially for us living in Minnesota where it will probably be more like 12 weeks. I woke this morning to 2 inches of fresh snow. I got my cardio exercise early shoveling our long driveway. It gave me an hour alone to pine for spring and to search, in vane for some kind of spiritual moral in the literal pain of winter.

I grew up in California and when I first moved to Minnesota 16 years ago I really loved winter. It was new and fascinating and wrought with change. But as the years have grown on my I’ve grown exhausted with the relentless assault. Winter hurts, and I’m longing for spring.

Maybe that will be the spiritual lesson I’ll take up today: longing. I’m longing and eager and waiting for a turn of season. I suppose we all are, not so much a physical change, that will come in time, but a transcendent one. We need a fresh shift in the spiritual climate. We need to pray for an awakening of another kind of Spring.

“Lord, we don’t know how long we will have to wait for an awakening of a “spiritual spring” but let it come! Lord, bring a freshness, and a day of new beginnings for us. Bring life and growth and joy and faith and fruitfulness. We admit it, we’re tired of the winter in our souls. Refresh us now. Lord, you are Spring itself. Come. Return, and bring your gifts of rebirth and life again! In Jesus…”