The word patience came across my reading twice in the past couple of days, causing me to consider patience in regard to spring. In my birding journal that includes tidbits and quotes about birds, it’s noted that Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, “Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.”
Spring pretty much arrives grudgingly, haltingly every year. We wait, impatiently, through too many March and April days that are too cold, too windy, too wet, too gray. There are good days, only to have spring fever dashed suddenly with frost and flurries.
But nature is patient, on a course sometimes fast, sometimes slow but always headed for green grass, singing frogs, budding trees, nesting songbirds. Robins are a picture of patience, arriving on our lawns and then waiting for thawing soil to give up worms.
Grass perks up on a warm day, only to wait again under a light covering of snow. Walleyes wait for the right water temperature to spawn. Swans wait in field ponds before continuing their trek northward.
In “Grace for the Moment,” Max Lucado says patience is freely offered, citing a verse from the book of Galatians, “The Spirit produces the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience.”
With patience, we will see the joy and peace in nature and fall in love with nature, which is quite amazing every day, whether that day is chilly or warm, windy or calm, wet or dry, gray or bright with sunshine.