A Meditation on Renewal, Warning, and the Voice of God
The Wind of Life
It is impossible for me to step outside at this time of year without sensing a renewed wind of life and hope. There is something about spring—the indomitable persistence of life—rising again from the dry, drab doldrums of winter to reassert its unconquerable fruitfulness once more.
It is there in the chorus of birdsong. In the budding of oak trees. In the bluebonnets and peach blossoms. In the renewed vigor of bluebirds building their nests and the blue jays and cardinals flitting through the trees around the house. It is there in the peeping of the turkey in our mudroom that has just hatched, and in the clutch of eggs the hen has suddenly begun to brood outside.
One of my favorite sights this year was this past Sunday. As I was preparing my message for the service, I looked out my office window and saw my four-year-old Ella, dressed for church, come purposefully sauntering out, take a yellow bucket, set it on the ground, turn on the water, fill it halfway, and carefully carry it off to the chickens. She is more precious to me than all the flowers of spring.
There is something about spring.
Not Paradise
Of course, it is not all good. I will not romanticize excessively. This is not paradise, and Texas reminds us of that whenever we are tempted to forget.
Every time I walk the thick wooded path from my house to my sister’s, along the ridge that stretches between us, I am reminded that this is not paradise—not by a long measure. It was on that very path, in late November, that I killed the last snake of 2025. I was walking with all six of our children and Beck through the brush, and I insisted on going first with my light to watch for snakes. Yet I promptly became absorbed in my phone, while Connie strode faithfully just behind me. We had not gone very far when she said, “Daddy, Daddy, do you see that? Daddy?”
I stopped. Right in the pathway lay a large rattlesnake. I broke off a branch from a dead limb nearby and made short order of him with several decisive blows to the head. Diamondback rattlesnakes are nothing to trifle with. Many of you have seen that through friends who have suffered the misfortune of their bite.
So I find myself warning the children to watch for snakes, to be alert for poison ivy. My poor Tina got into a patch of poison ivy last week without realizing it, and her face swelled to nearly twice its size until her eyelids were reduced to narrow slits. She was miserable, though thankfully she returned to normal after about a week.
So it is not all paradise this springtime. That is how life is—full of promise and fruit and blossoms and renewal, yet also punctuated by serpents and poison ivy and thorns and pain and sorrow and betrayal. This beautiful ground we cultivate is damaged, cursed because of human sin, and we must receive the blessing along with the burden.
The Serpent’s Method
One of the most vivid encounters I have ever had with one of the less blessed inhabitants of our little corner of creation occurred a few years ago, when I set out to walk with my brother Nathaniel. We intended to take a good hike along the perimeter of the hay meadow down toward the river and back again, avoiding the roadways as much as possible.
Just before leaving, I picked up my .22 revolver and nearly strapped it to my belt, but then I second-guessed myself, securing it away before walking out the door—a decision I would regret only minutes later.
We ambled through the tall summer grasses, past the haystacks and the draft horses lazily chewing, and on toward the edge of the woods. We made our way near the compost piles, skirting the tree line that marked the Aquilla Creek draw, though we were still within the hay meadow.
Suddenly we stopped, our minds racing to comprehend what we were witnessing. I had never seen anything quite like it. Not more than five paces away lay a full-grown cottontail rabbit, crouched low in the grass, ears flattened, body trembling. Pressed against the rabbit was a very large rattlesnake—more than five feet long. The snake held its head poised just above the rabbit, and each time the rabbit began to stir or show alarm, the snake would gently rub its ear with its muzzle, and the rabbit would settle back down into a calmer posture.
The rabbit would then seem to remember its surroundings and grow agitated again, but once more the snake would nuzzle its ear, soothing it back into stillness.
It became immediately evident that the snake had already bitten the rabbit and was waiting for the venom to take full effect. Yet while the poison worked through the creature’s veins, the serpent was, in a chilling sense, comforting it into its own demise—soothing it toward death.
I could scarcely believe what I was seeing, and how I wished I had brought my .22. Looking around, however, I saw a large cow bone nearby, which, by a providential convergence of opportunity and indignation, soon landed upon the snake’s head. We then quickly put the rabbit out of its misery and walked on in silence for a time, processing what we had witnessed.
I found myself reflecting again on this world, which is not so much a paradise as we might wish, and on how everything went wrong when the enemy of our souls appeared as a serpent in a garden—injecting the poison of his ideas into the minds of men: toxins of suspicion, toxins of doubting God’s motives, toxins of division toward one another.
I thought of how subtly the enemy cultivates apathy, complacency, and distraction in those he has bitten with his lies, waiting for the venom to accomplish its work until the moment arrives when we can no longer move beyond him. The rabbit could have run far faster than that slithering serpent.
“But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3).
And, not to be overly graphic, but at times I look at our culture and think of that snake and that rabbit. The stratagems of the enemy are not only to terrify or to induce anxiety and dread. Often it is to soothe us to death—to pacify us, to mesmerize and lull us into apathy until we lack the resolve and courage to rise and move out of that state of mind and manner of living.
How often the grace of God comes as a word, a promise, a memory breaking through the malaise—the intoxicated normalcy of our clouded minds—and giving us an impetus to move, an impulse to spring free from the trap and make a change.
A Springtime of the Heart
And so, bringing it back to spring, I feel hope in the air. I pray that God would grant His people everywhere that impulse of promise—that inward summons that says, “I can do this.”
Like Abraham, gazing at the stars and receiving the impulse to leave his people, his country, and that decaying city of Ur.
Like Matthew, seeing the Savior pass by his tax collector’s booth and hearing the call, immediately rising and leaving everything to follow Him, as Peter and Andrew had likewise done.
“Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light”( Rom. 13:11–12).
I pray that 2026 would be a springtime of the heart—that we would not merely admire the blossoming of flowers, the budding trees, the newborn fawns, and the birds in their nests, but that we ourselves would spring free—from the spirit of this world, from apathy, from the poisoned mind—and that we would step, or even leap, toward the promise and voice of our Maker.
As He walks in the garden, may we not hide behind fig leaves or attempt to evade His voice, but rather hear His voice, know Him, and follow Him into life—life more abundant, life of purpose, life renewed beyond what we imagined possible.
That is my prayer for this springtime. My prayer for you and for me.
Watch for snakes.