I absolutely adore springtime and am fond of fall as well. However, I despise summer, and I tolerate winter only because it’s hunting season!
But spring . . . the mornings are still cool, the grass is turning green, the cows suddenly look fatter, and the babies – calves and goats, that is – are adorable.
Besides that, my garden is starting to grow – at least the five kinds of squash I planted; at the same time, I’m pondering why okra refuses to come up, no matter how hard you try. And if anyone can tell me why my watermelons wind up with black ends – no matter what the soil – please email me and enlighten me.
Another exciting thing about this spring is that we’re moving into our new house – it’s sort of a rebirth. Although I have ranched all my life, this is the first time I have actually lived on a ranch with cows and goats. Granddad Currie moved into Paint Rock in 1935, in the house that Mother recently moved out of, so I never grew up on the ranch. We have a cabin built there – I call it the D&D Ranch Hilton; Loretta calls it a “shack in the mesquites.”
Loretta and I now live on a small ranch south of San Angelo. On Sunday afternoon, I finally unloaded five huge boxes of books for my study, and I was struck not only by some of the books I had but how many of them I had not yet gotten around to reading.
There was the usual collection for someone like me: 15 Frederick Buechners; 5 T. B. Mastons; 5 Robert Farrar Capons; 6 Will Campbells; at least 10 Wendell Berrys; as well as some other wonderful books that, as I said, I need to read for the first time, and tons that I need to read again.
Then there were some books that I didn’t even realize I had – a biography of B. H. Carroll; 2 Criswell Study Bibles (he was a cousin, after all); some very old books, like The Italian Novelist; 6 volumes of Women of the World; and 10 volumes including titles such as Women of Early Christianity, Women of France, and Women of England.
So I just read this to Loretta, and she said, “nice, what is your point?” Aren’t wives wonderful for getting you back on focus?
Well, actually I have several points.
Point 1: We all have some treasures around us that we do not realize we have, like a biography of B. H. Carroll and a daily devotional book written by E. Stanley Jones in 1931 (he was a great influence on Dr. Nat Tracy). We need to look around us and treasure the wonderful gifts that surround us, starting with 92-year-old mothers, wise wives, and awesome children.
Point 2: Everything in nature is growing around you, but how about you? Are you growing, too? Are you forgiving old grudges that are eating your guts out? Are you reading something new you had intended to read long ago? Did you give a little extra money to the last mission or hunger offering, or can you write an extra check right now?
Point 3: Who do you know personally that you are not sure has a personal relationship with Christ? Why not go on the BGCT’s TexasHope 2010 Web site (http://www.texashope2010.com) and get some of the wonderful materials available there? I plan to personally give 100 people copies of the TexasHope 2010 video, along with 100 New Testaments from the Richard Jackson Center for Evangelism and Encouragement. These New Testaments are available for ordering at http://tools.jacksoncenter.org/catalog/index.php?cPath=21.
Despair is all around us these days. But we who know Jesus have the hope that people need. It’s up to us to lead the way to hope for a world drowning in despair.
There’s an old saying that “two people looked out prison bars – one saw darkness and one saw stars.” Where others see despair, we can see hope. We have hope, because we belong to Jesus. But that hope isn’t doing anyone any good unless we share Him with others.
I started off by saying that I love spring. There’s another old saying that “hope springs eternal.” Somehow those two words – hope and spring – just seem to go together. But for us, our hope is eternal – because it’s in Christ. Cherish the treasures around you, let yourself grow, and share the hope of Christ.