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.