Anticipation

I just love that this little baby will be born in April. Having enjoyed April birthdays myself for the last 38 years, you feel like all of creation is joining you in celebration--the world feels like a party with flowers blooming on trees, bushes, and in the yard! April is an explosion of color and new life. It makes so much sense to me that God would design the celebration of Passover and thereby ordain the resurrection of His son during this time of the year. It is a time when the earth speaks of life after the death of Fall and the dormant Winter. So, with a sense of anticipation, I planted daffodil bulbs in our yard today. It was getting dark entirely too early as it does this time of the year and the air is cool. The grass is dying and turning the yucky shade of brown that will blanket the neighborhood for the next several months. And here I am stuffing these awkward looking brown bulbs into chilly earth. And I just smile inside when I think about our own little private celebration for this new member of the family come April. What better welcome than the happy daffodil?

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
(William Wordsworth)