New Beginnings

Amazing... how the crocus begin to pop up out of the cold hard ground, defying the previous year's death. Being resurrected to new life, they display themselves in royal apparel, reflecting the King in His majestic purple robes, and the Bride, in her pure spotless white linen, gloriously announcing that "times of refreshing" are here -- heralding the coming of spring -- a new beginning!

O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?
1 Cor. 15:55

For the past seven years, I have kept a devotional journal. Blogging is new for me. Eight is often a picture of 'new beginnings' throughout the Bible, and in this, the 8th year of my 'journaling pursuit' to know the heart of God, I graciously take hold of where this path might lead me, knowing that my Jesus always goes with me and before me, and it is simply for me to follow. Hosea tells us, in the sixth chapter of his book, that "we shall know, if we follow on to know the LORD; His going forth is prepared as the morning, and He shall come unto us as the rain" ~ Hosea 6:3. It's April. As I get ready to cultivate the soil of my New York garden, I find it's time, also, to ask Him to rain upon my heart, and soften its ground to receive His plantings: all that He desires to work in me, according to His good pleasure, so that I might walk in His newness of life.

"I want to know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on...!"
Philippians 3:10-14