The Almond Branch

Sometimes rank does not have it's privileges. I needed to make a photocopy of my sermon an hour before worship and asked to interrupt a member's last minute large run to copy my few pages. I was refused and sent to the CE resource room's copier. As I grumbled at the second copier, a friend of the congregation walked in and said, "look at those branches!" There, right before my eyes were necklaces of water beads hanging from delicate branches outside the window just a few feet from my eyes. I had not seen it. Today's reading in Jeremiah shows God posing the question, "what do you see?" Jeremiah saw an almond branch - known as the first to waken in Spring. What a wonderful gift for the world today. Gloom and doom abound, but if we look, we may see the first wakening signs of Spring.