thoughts of spring

I think I'm having my first taste of spring. Winter has been long, and I feel like I have been suffering from an involuntary hibernation when it comes to my creativity and to having eyes to take in the world around me. It has been too long that I have had to push through the thickness in my brain to have any sort of thoughts, too long that I have pulled out a blank page only to stare at it and walk away leaving it still blank, too long since I have had any words to write. It is funny that this spring is coming now, in the coldest month of the winter, but somehow I don't care that the wind is biting and that my head aches as I walk through the cold, because at last I am alive again. 

I've been thinking about a table, set for a meal, but someone is missing. One place setting is broken. I've been thinking about a second table that is whole. Whole. That word is a healing word. Healing the broken, filling the empty. Complete. Finished. I've been thinking about a quilt. It is pieces being put together into a whole. Again, that word. I've been thinking about building, about restoration. We're supposed to be doing that, you know. Restoration is our calling. I once heard that our task is to restore, piece by piece, the Shalom-Peace that once was over our world, the peace that was torn and broken when man fell, all for the return of our King. So I've been thinking about a table, and a meal of fellowship, a communion of saints and a wedding feast. And I have been thinking about being whole.

These hands

I look down at my hands and feel out of place. They aren't big or ugly, they're just uncomfortable in this unfamiliar setting. My hands, confident at work, are strong. I know, I have seen them guide errant clay to center. They are sensitive too. It is hard to describe what a wall of a pot feels like when it is too thin and about to collapse, or thick and holding extra weight, but my hands know. Put a pen in them and images appear in the margins of my notes, faces staring, forms lining the edges. Give them something to hold and they will hold it. Give them something to clean, they'll clean it. They will hold a child's hand, brush a sister's hair, knead and shape dough into loaves of bread. But if you lay them, idle, next to a dress of satin and put a thin silver bracelet around my wrist they feel uncomfortable and useless. Take off the apron and work boots and they feel too large and awkward. The hands that are so capable in one setting fidget, unsure in this setting, just waiting to be released from the fine trappings and games of elegance. All they want is to be let go to wash a dish or something. But something, please!