I’ve had a strange experience the last couple of days as I go out for a morning run in the park near our apartment. The trees are still bare. The ground is still muddy. The snowbanks are still there, and the black ice is covering the paths where they’ve melted and frozen. But the birds are chirping like I haven’t heard in months; not just one bird optimistically singing away, but what sound like hundreds, all around me. Things have warmed up, spring is almost here, and the birds are just as excited as I am!

It’s a good image to me of this “Lenten” season, the season when the days are lengthening—that’s where “Lenten” comes from. We live in this bare, dry, cold time, but we can already see the signs of hope and spring on the other side.

My father-in-law is famous for predicting that spring’s coming. On a warm day, when you can smell the snow melting and feel the sun shining and hear the water trickling away from the snowbanks, he’ll say, “Spring’s just around the corner!” And this is great!

The problem is that he starts saying it in December, while the winter’s very first snow is melting.

This is what often happens in life, I think. We know that there will probably be another snowstorm between now and May. We know that we might have another deep freeze. But today, it’s warm, at least by our standards after a cold month of February. And this happens in all of life: we go through phases of freezing and thawing. There might be a moment when we feel grace and encouragement and consolation, and then a long period where we feel spiritual dryness and despair and exhaustion.

The secret is to hold onto those signs of spring; to enjoy them, when they’re here. To go out for a walk in the warm weather, to take a break between Zoom meetings and get a little bit of sunshine. And then to remember them, when they’re gone again, in the sure and certain hope that they will return. Because the beautiful thing about a 45-degree day in February is not that it’s really warm. It’s that it’s a little hint of the many 50- and 60- and 70-degree days to come.

So hold on, this Lent, to those signs of spring, because the secret is the same in spiritual life as it is in New England weather: to hold onto the warmth when it’s here, and to remember it when it’s gone.