I went for a walk early this morning. Grass sparkled with dew. New leaves, infused with the bright green of spring, glowed as the sun touched them. Everything seems even more splendid because the crisp breeze still carries the memory of winter, and because the red and violet tulips were just several weeks ago valiantly pushing through a late snow. Everything feels victorious and beautiful.

Phil and I are also engaging in some new things this month. We will spend two days at Michigan’s state homeschool convention and three days at an adoption and orphan advocacy summit in Colorado. We will speak, share books, and talk with others about children, education, adoption and our God. These trips have the exciting freshness of newness, like the spring. We will meet new people, glean new ideas and inspiration for our work, and, we hope, pass on new ideas and inspiration with others. It is new and it is refreshing, like a spring breeze after months of gray winter.

But I don’t want to pursue newness just for the sake of novelty and excitement, as in a “new and improved” toothpaste or potato chip. I don’t always want to be pining for new experiences to fill my senses, entertain me, or prop up my sense of purpose.

Instead, I want to be seeking God’s newness: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19) God promises to transform our dead winters into new life, new covenant, new birth, new heart. Someday we will inhabit a new heaven and earth where there will be no more tears. And that newness has already begun. We are in the midst of winter giving way to spring, just as the land of Narnia, after being cursed by long years of winters, is brought back to life under the footsteps of Aslan.

Winter has settled into the hearts of millions of children around the world. Children, living on streets and in brothels and villages destroyed by war or AIDS, are isolated where it seems no warmth can reach. Some of these children do not have our assurance that, no matter how long the winter, spring always returns. Their lives are gray, barren and bitterly cold. This is why we want to follow God in doing something new. We want to see luminous newness coming to life in the lives of these children.

The vibrant beauty of spring in Michigan glorifies God. So does a spring of hope and new life in the face of a child.

Please pray that Jesus will melt winters as we do new things in His name.

Kristin

www.adoption-by-grace.com

Copyright 2007, Kristin Wong.