Tender green shoots of defiance

My church has been doing a ‘difficult topics’ sermon series during Lent: mental health, depression, divorce, addiction and sexual assault, . It’s this time in the church year, this time in the calendar year, where the earth looks like it’ll never recover from winter, where each of us feel like we might never recover from winter, that we can go into the dark spaces. And a little bit at a time, we see that winter’s hold isn’t forever, the sun is brighter, the days longer, and the bulbs begin to push up tender green shoots of defiance. There is hope coming, if we can hold on, and there’s still hope even when we can’t.