The earth curves through space on a yearly journey around the sun, spinning endlessly on its tilted axis. This axis holds the secret of our changing seasons. If, instead of leaning exactly 23 1/2 degrees to one side, the axis of the earth were straight up and down, the globe would present the same aspect to the sun throughout the year. There would be no spring and summer, autumn and winter. While the earth would have varied climates, there would be no varied seasons, and we would have missed so much beauty and diversity!
It is fascinating to discover that the tilt of the earth never changes as it makes its annual circuit of the sun. It is the continuous altering of the planet's position in relation to the sun that produces the parade of seasons. The upper end, or the Northern Hemisphere, tilts toward the sun in summer, away from it in winter. During the earth's curving progress from the tilted-away position to the tilted-toward-position and back again, it passes through the intermediate changes and we have those seasons of most dramatic change, autumn and spring.
There is a precise moment each year when the tick of a watch separates winter and spring. It is the moment—usually on the twenty-first of March—when the sun reaches the celestial equator, the imaginary line through the heavens directly above the earth's equator. At the exact moment when the sun's center appears to cross this line, the seasons officially change. This is the vernal equinox of the ancient astronomers. At that moment the rays of the sun fall vertically on the equator, and day and night are of equal length all over the globe. From that moment nights in the Northern Hemisphere grow shorter and days lengthen until the summer solstice, which falls late in June. At the time of the summer or winter solstice there is a brief time when "the sun stands still in the sky" and summer or winter are born as the sun begins its ponderously predictable swing toward the equator once more.
The vernal equinox passed last week, and I can tell that my little world is being hit more directly by the sun's rays. It is awash with color and the stirring of life on every side. Furry yellow-green catkins dangle gracefully from oak limbs. A halo of pinkish-white bells surrounds the manzannita tree. The migrating cedar waxwings have stripped the red winter berries from the toyon. The avocado trees are losing their leaves and at the same time covering themselves with chartreuse blossoms. Tissue-thin apricot, peach, and nectarine blossoms adorn the trees with delicate grace and gently float to the ground in the soft spring wind, like falling pink snow.
On the roof just outside my back door is a large electrical-connection box. Years ago a pair of Bewick's wrens set up housekeeping there, and each season they raise several families, in it. The Bewick's wren is a wee bit of a bird with the heart of a giant and a seemingly unending song that is sweet, tumbling, and lilting beyond description. The volume and length of this outpouring of liquid melody is amazing. How can it possibly come from such a tiny speck of life? The male bird is fiercely attentive to his home, scrapping furiously with any other bird that dares to blunder onto his turf! I often sit for long intervals watching this aggressive little house builder as he courts, builds, feeds, and trains his family.
I marvel at the variety of nature in the spring! One bright day last week, bone weary from much bookwork, I sat in the sun, watching the wren. I looked toward the overgrown meadow. Thick yellow-and-black bumblebees were bustling about in search of nectar. I watched as they lit on the violets, riding them to earth with their weight. Hummingbirds darted about, fanning the flowers with the speed of their tiny wings. Red ants explored decaying duff under the avocado trees. A pale-green lacewing insect crawled over a red-and-black ladybird beetle in its hurry to reach the top of a slender blade of green grass. Once on the tip, it looked about with eyes that shone in the sunlight as though plated with burnished gold. The day was a symphony of color!
I remember hiking in Death Valley one spring. I had crossed miles of shale and gravel when I noticed a blotch of color against the monotonous gray of the gravel. It was a lone desert five-spot flower. There were no green leaves. There was nothing except a perfectly formed rose-purple flower contrasting brilliantly with the grayness. Glowing red spots at the base of the five petals both lit up its throat and give it its name. Why was it blooming there all alone?
One time in a March long past I hiked across the sand dunes of the lower Mojave Desert. I topped an especially high dune arid dropped down the far side into a solid bank of pleasantly perfumed desert lilies. The pristine-white flowers rose above slender, deeply ruffled blue-green leaves that spread out flat across the sand. On the center of the back of each lily petal the Designer had painted a bluish-green band. Was such beauty and fragrance wasted on that desert sand dune?
In a boggy mountain meadow beside the John Muir Trail up in the High Sierra country, I found a fascinating flower one spring. I had slipped off my pack and sunk wearily down on the moss beside a bog when I noticed a slender reddish stem pointing skyward. It was covered with blossoms of a delicate shade of pink, and each blossom looked for all the world like a tiny elephant head in profile—flat, broad ears, well-defined forehead, and long, arching trunk. Clinging to the stalk with minute stems, the blossoms nodded their little elephant heads in the breeze. I remember rolling over on my back in the thick moss, looking up into the vault of sky, and wondering to God why such intricate perfection was expended on a flower that so few would ever see?
As I considered those flowers, which often bloom unseen by human eyes, unappreciated by human hearts, breathing their perfume in air that few humans would breathe, I marveled. The God who created the vast reaches of space, who keeps the earth tilted at precisely 23 l/2 degrees, who moves the earth and sun in their orbits, is the very same God who designed and perfumes the flowers. Both boundless space and diminutive blossom are maintained by His power—and I can only bow in reverence and awe.
Our God must love color, beauty, and diversity, for He has been profligate in filling our lives with all three. I think, too, that He must also have a sense of whimsy and humor. Consider kangaroos and snap dragons and elephant-head flowers! Did He chuckle and smile as He designed these for us? I am sure that each blade of grass, each budding flower, and each bird that sings has been given to us as an expression of His love. But what about beauty in nooks and crannies and desert wastes? Why there, my Lord?
Long ago Solomon said that there is a purpose for every living thing under the sun. The beauty that escapes human recognition is seen and appreciated by the living God, for in the economy of God there is no wasted flower, no unnecessarily spilled perfume. Although Scripture calls these plants the flowers of the field that are here for today and yet perish in the noonday sun, even so, they matter to a beauty-loving God.
Last week as the vernal equinox came, I sat alone, with the sun hot on my back, listening to the throbbing vibrations of honeybees at work. Perfume floated uphill from the citrus orchards below. I looked again at the way God has painted our world. A span of blue arched overhead. A wrap of variegated greens spread across the land, and with the hands of a master artist He brushed color for contrast to please our eyes and delight our senses. The color of spring!
Because the earth slowly changes its position in relation to the sun, every year there will be a spring. "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease" (Gen. 8:22). That is a promise from your Lord—and when spring begins, He will once more fill your world with color, for your pleasure, because He loves you. You see, the color of spring is love!
