Today’s Prayer to Passage will be from the book “A Moveable Feast” by Ernest Hemingway.

Today I pray, “Dear God, It is now that time of year when everything is noticeably vital. The birds each have distinguished songs. The breeze is heard in the leaves appearing on trees. I am listening for crickets and looking for fireflies. Lilacs and apple blossoms and tulips are blooming. Of four seasons, this one is my favorite. I asked you in a prayer one day in March for a spring that lasts so long it feels like two springs. And here we are with green grass all throughout the month of April. In Minnesota. It feels miraculous. And rain. And sunshine bringing temps in the mid 70s. A spring so long it feels like two springs. I appreciate Your comfort. Amen.”

Following my prayer, I held the closed book in my hands and opened it to this passage:

“With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.”
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY

I still become delighted when the passages answer my prayers as though Ernest Hemingway is peeking in to say “Hello.” I can feel writers peeking in to say “Hello” more and more. And turning to a passage is like the approach of a new season. Each one brings its own new light. Each one comfortably arrives in the knowing and the unknowing, in the faith and the foreboding nature of it all. I am delighted in this arrival that finally arrives, though however frightening it could be that it could nearly fail.