Joy's Alaskan Spring Day

Photo credit - both top and bottom photos: Marshall Ronne

by Sister Joy Degerlund

It is a sunny Alaskan spring day, today; it is the third day of March, 2002. I opened the doors to let some fresh air in. Praise the Lord. It is truly a blessing, after days of snow and rain. We are all hoping the sun will dry up all the standing water around our homes. For, you see, it rained and rained before the ground had a chance to thaw, and now we have large lakes in our yards and fields. The rivers are swollen. There is flooding on the highways to the north of us.

My boys walked to the river to see how high the water had come up. There is a seven-foot bank we used to climb down to reach the river ice in February. The river is no longer frozen or dormant. It has risen to the top of the bank, full of life. I marvel at the idea of all that water. I can see our small area in my mind’s eye, where we scrambled down to the ice and over it, to a stretch of snowy beach. We lit fires and enjoyed the sunny afternoon huddled around a fire with cups of coffee, good friends and our children playing in the snow.

Now all of that is covered with water, seven feet of water that must be three times as wide as the original streambed. How can there be so much water?

How could God flood this entire earth, cover the highest mountains, fill the deepest valleys? But He can, and He did. He did judge sin because He is a righteous God, a mighty God, a just God, a faithful God who loves us and who made this world for us, perfectly providing our every need, until sin corrupted it.

Praise the Lord for Jesus, who like the spring in death, Jesus has paid our debt of sin; like the rivers’ waters, He has washed us as clean and as new and fresh as spring, full of new life and full of new hope.

Praise the Lord, for in the death of our Saviour upon Calvary’s cross, as in the death of winter, we have a promise of new life, a promise from the very God who created this world for us, to provide all that we need physically, and spiritually, and for our souls.

A moose feeds on favored grasses after a long winter of eating only willow branches.

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page updated April 21, 2002