From the blog:

The Reminder of Renewal

by Al Parker•5 minutes ago

Now, the curtain draws back and reveals the act of second week of April coming on. Two weeks ago, were the red hues of Red Maple and the pale greens and brown greens of Elm flowers. Slippery Elm seemed more a brownish that the greens of the flowers of the American Elm (or is it the other way around?). But today, with the abundance of rain, the hillsides glow with the elvish greens of Sugar Maples with their gentle rounded tops. The drooping green caterpillar flowers of Bigtooth Aspen and the red caterpillars of Eastern Cottonwood are evident in their respective ridge and riverside spots. Redbud flowers emerge into the scene who fall behind many of the yard Magnolias. There is timing in everything that God does!

Redbuds ought to be described as soft pastel pink and purple smears on the canvas – not really red at all. Not really just buds at all. And the buds that have laid dormant all winter – seem to be dead. Sometimes the only way to know of tree life at all is to truly make a twig or branch dead by breaking it off and looking for the green of the inner bark. So barren and lifeless the world seems in winter. Buds then, just look like the grave markers of what was a leafy explosion of life from the last year. All that exuberance reduced to a silent and sealed tomb.

Is not also this another amazing feat of timing that the Creator has plugged into our world? Every year, without fail, the bud scales are rolled away from the new life inside. Trees are one of the first to speak out this oration of rebirth. We frequently focus on the flowers of spring which come on so quickly, but these bounding forth tree flowers expand into the air where we tend to not notice them. People notice the cherry and apple blossoms while not catching the tints and shades of the forests as they flower and leaf.  

In another week or two the distinct pointed top tulip trees will show their new leafy emergings on the wooded slopes of bright yellow-green. They will be followed by the mouse-ear sized leaves of the oaks at morel time. In the shaded valley bottoms the buckeyes have leafed out way ahead of everyone and by that mini-oak leaf week the buckeyes will be pointing heavenward their boisterous and elegant flower clusters.

I find this all an astounding measure of the Lord's annual grace to us. Just at the time of year that we celebrate His life given up, laid to rest in a stone cavern, and flowering forth in resurrection, we can see the whole world boasting of life anew. That pattern set into the world is so evident in our temporate climates - it is something that our tropical neighbors are not so fortunate in seeing. That cycle of life, death, and rebirth are plain. They went on prior to the coming of the Christ and they go on now each year without faltering. What better reminder could we have?