We're both SoCal kids. Thats where we were born and bred and even though our home state is a hot mess right now, I still claim it as my own. I've lived a lot of places, but have always answered "I live in --- but I'm FROM Southern California." We spent several years in various locales, and right now, we live in Ohio. But I'm not from here. No offense to the native buckeyes, but I'll always prefer sand between my toes all year round over experiencing the change of seasons.
I always find it interesting that people claim to love the seasons in cold climates. Basically, there are only two seasons where I live. Snow and road construction. One is bitterly cold and the other is pretty humid. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about the weather here. Just an observation in the context of preferring the life and climate of a different location. And of course, the mindset. I don't think like a mid westerner, or like the natives of any of the other places we've lived for that matter.
But one thing I've been able to experience from life spent outside of my home-place is a vivid appreciation for new life. Everything is pretty much dead and brown in October, and things don't get green again until late April. That's where we are right now. The new life all around me right now is stunning.
I'm not much of a purple person, except in the yard. It's all purples and blues and I love it.
Even the tacky yard art is fun outside in the spring!
This kind of new growth never really caught my attention when I lived in the southwest, because it looked this way all year round. But experiencing a real winter showed me what I had been missing.
New life.
It's like getting a gift every spring. Even after the most bitter cold in winter, eventually we see this.
"Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!"
2 Corinthians 9:15
Beautiful rich colors.
"A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond..."
Acts 16:14
And wildlife we haven't seen for months re-emerge.
"But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water
springing up to eternal life."
John 4:14
"Do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?"
Matthew 6:25-26
"For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
2 Corinthians 5:1
The purples and blues and whites will continue to cycle through our space for the next several weeks. I'll get used to being warm and seeing the bright colors outside the windows. But I'll never cease to be thankful for the vivid reminders all of this new growth affords. Thanks for stopping by.
"Therefore if anyone is in Christ,
he is a new creature;
the old things passed away;
behold, new things have come."
2 Corinthians 5:17
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