Hope Springs Eternal

I'm not a farm girl. It sounds like it could be a fun thing maybe, but not on a day like today. We are slowly melting from our 15 inches of snow. In its place, there are lots of ice chunks and puddles scattered throughout the yard. All of this melting leaves us with something awful in our backyard. I call it poop soup.

I'm not a dog lover by nature. I'm not one of those who thinks every dog is cute or can't wait to get my hands on every dog I see. I love Lily, our soon to be four year old Golden Retriever. She has brought life and joy and love in sweet ways. But truth be told, I'm not sure that I love her this much! She has the ever present fur balls that she sheds all over the house. And when the weather is just so, outside she leaves us with poop soup.

If you dare to even go there, it is a place of slushy, melting, disgusting mud piles. Except it isn't mud. It's poop. Normally we scoop poop more frequently, but since the big blizzard, we don't go digging in snow -- we wait until the snow melts enough to find it. And find it I did. I couldn't think to count how many piles it was because all I could think was "do I love my dog this much???" I can tell you the bag was so heavy that it severely weighed down my Walmart bag and I was just thankful it didn't break it.

As I scooped outside in what smelled like a cow pasture, I was drawn to the lessons in it. If you can't enjoy the experience, at least maybe you can learn something from it. Like "you should really leave this one for your husband to do..." and "why oh why does a sweet fluffy dog need to do this in my backyard?"

Then the birds started singing. One of the first times I've heard them this year. I was drawn to the hope that spring is coming. I saw that poop as my sin that I have no power to clean up. Some of it picks up easily, and some just makes an awful mess. Without the work of God in my life, I'd be that mess. And I guess the thing that grabbed me was that even though I wasn't sure if I loved Lily enough for this, God does love me enough. Even though I can't completely clean up this yuck, God can. He can handle life's messes. Maybe He even uses that poop to fertilize our deeper growth. Our God redeems, that's for sure. He finds a way to use everything for good.

Hope does spring eternal. No matter how bad our mess is, God is willing and able to clean us up. He makes us new. The Living Water washes us like the spring rains come and water the earth. Lord, come do a work that only You can do.