I don’t know about you, but I always struggle the first few weeks after we “spring forward” into Daylight Saving Time. A few days ago, I managed to get out of bed at an earlier-than-usual hour, though it took until the sun was up for me to make it out of the house with the dog. In between bursts of rain on our quiet walk, I snapped this picture with my phone. The view and its accompanying quiet felt like a gentle hello from God.

I love this photograph for so many reasons: the play of early morning sun and gray clouds; the exuberance of green grass growing where I rarely see it; the meandering path along the flat trail (it plunges down just past the distant tree line); the stately oak leafing out to welcome spring.

The trees in this picture have survived not just one year of drought but years of it. Yet look at them. Look at those green leaves.

They remind me of the tree in Jeremiah 17. Though not planted by a stream, they’ve soaked up plentiful water from this season of rain, and they’re thriving after the drought. If I had to name the predominant color of green here, I would call it, “Celebration.”

Perhaps you haven’t been feeling much like celebrating recently. Maybe you’ve been in a drought yourself? Or caught out in a storm? I hope this photograph, these verses from Jeremiah, will renew you and give you hope.

For he will be like a tree planted by the water,
That extends its roots by a stream
And will not fear when the heat comes;
But its leaves will be green,
And it will not be anxious in a year of drought
Nor cease to yield fruit.
— Jeremiah 17:8

I was reading up on Daylight Saving Time and came across this ad celebrating a bill for DST in 1918. Its tagline, “Get Your Hoe Ready!” made me immediately wonder, “So you can kill your alarm clock with it?” I don’t suppose that’s what they had in mind, but it does make me smile to imagine my alarm clock’s untimely death by garden tool. How do you adjust to Daylight Saving Time?