Pause for just a moment—wherever you are—and gaze out the nearest window.  (I’ll wait here while you do.) 

Take some time to ponder the landscape.  Notice the swells of the land, the shape of the clouds, and the angle of the sun rays.  Most of all, examine the colors.  Which slice of the color wheel predominates in your view? 

I don’t know where you are or what your surroundings may be, but I can hazard a very reliable guess as to what color caught your eye.  The color green.  This time of year, green is inescapable.  It wriggles with the grass and drapes from the trees and swirls in the mist of the morning sun.  If you’re in the country today, your view will be saturated with the color, fields and trees and mountains blending harmoniously in a thousand different shades.  Yet even if your window opens onto a cheerless thoroughfare in the heart of urbanity, the Great Artist will have left a touch of green somewhere—a swipe on a curb, a splatter on an ornamental tree, even a drip in a windowbox. 

The green of spring can be surprising—as though during the winter, we forget how intense the color truly is.  It can be soothing—a restful scene that calms our souls.  But most of all, it is startling.  After all, a few weeks ago, green was scarce.  The world was still wrapped in the garments of winter, dove-gray and sand-brown and chalky white.  Trees were silver skeletons.  The fields were crunchy with the withered stubble of last summer.  The miracle of birds and butterflies was yet to come.  Indeed, the world seemed entrenched in winter, and a visitor from another planet, unfamiliar with our cyclical earth, might have supposed spring was a myth—a legend invented by a cold-weary people, a phantom of useless hope.

Then suddenly, we look out our windows one ordinary day, and the landscape is green! 

Every spring, I determine that I’ll note the exact moment when green begins to seep up through the earth.  I watch, scrutinizing the world daily, even hourly.  But that moment can’t be caught.  It’s as if some crisp, calm night, heavy with the heralding of crickets and spring peepers, a gossamer angel strikes a divine match, and a wild riot begins in the cold soil and naked trees and forsaken birds’ nests again.  Then when we wake, a laughing sun is rollicking over the horizon, the trees are racing each other to put out leaves, the birds are singing, “Eggs!  Eggs!  EGGS!”—and the whole world is green.  Not the surface green of a painted façade, but a real, deep, living green, a juicy green that soaks into everything until the grass is dripping, saturated with green.  It’s a renewal from the roots, a total transformation. 

How can it be that one day, everything is old and tired and asleep—and the next, it seems, God has poured immortality onto the world, and all is young and bright once more?  When is the magic moment?

It’s no wonder the question intrigues us, for the lure of “magic moments” captivates us all.  We love the split-second victories, the instant solutions, the overnight answers—celebrity diets and express checkout lanes and instant oatmeal.  And many of us, if we’re honest, are waiting for a “magic moment” of our own. 

What does your moment look like?  When you wake up and your world is green, what is the first sight that meets your eyes?  Maybe your spouse is watching you with eyes of love instead of apathy.  Maybe the disease that’s tormented you has folded its wrinkled wings and flown away.  Maybe you can finally fit in those jeans, kick that habit, call that friend, make that decision. 

The moment is there for all of us, a delicious dream in the back of our minds—the moment that everything changes, the moment our confining circumstances are snipped in two.  It’s a moment of confetti and balloons and fanfare, a moment of “happily ever after.”  But if we’re not careful, we can spend our entire lives waiting for that moment without realizing the truth.

My friends, I’ll keep watching every year for the “magic moment” of spring—but I no longer believe I’ll actually catch it.  That’s because I’ve started to understand that the moment is a myth.  Yes, the transformation may seem sudden; however, the miracle of spring isn’t “going green” but “growing green.”

What’s the difference?  “Going green” is a quick fix, a snap of the fingers.  “Growing green,” on the other hand—that’s a process.  A process that’s usually not glamorous, sometimes invisible, but always creates transformation.  It’s the athlete’s hard-fought game behind the last-minute point that wins the match—the long years of education and practice behind the entrepreneur’s success—the quiet moments of devotion behind the pastor’s inspiring sermon. 

You see, the story of spring doesn’t begin when we notice the green.  The story begins long before there’s any external change at all.  While the trees are lifeless sticks and the ground is brown and withered and the air is frosty, the process has already begun.  Sap is circulating in the trees to meet the demands of new growth; I once noticed almost imperceptible leaf buds on an expectant tree during a snowstorm.  Birds are beginning their migratory paths from southern regions; in fact, research has revealed that the purple martins near my house began their journey to Arkansas as early as late January! 

All winter, when we see only death and barrenness, the world is in fact readying itself for the coming of spring.  That’s why, when the moment is right, the landscape is able to be transformed in such a strikingly sudden time period.  The moment of green looks effortless from our perspective, but a long journey has led to this point.

Growing green isn’t just for plants.  It’s for all of us.  It’s the process of healing, of restructuring, of change and acceptance and decisions.  It’s long and it’s tedious and sometimes it’s downright painful. 

For proof, just open your Bibles and take a quick peek at the story of Joseph.  Genesis 41 is the greatest overnight success story ever told.  A forgotten prisoner languishing in a dungeon is suddenly lord of the land!  In a matter of hours, Joseph leaves his cell, his poverty, his obscurity, his hopelessness and receives prestige from Pharaoh, authority over Egypt, material prosperity, and opportunities beyond his wildest dreams.  If ever there was a moment when the world turned green, this is it.  Imagine how many people gawked at Joseph, envying his fairy-book story. 

But what the rumors didn’t mention and the jealous onlookers never knew was the fact that this particular golden boy had been betrayed by his brothers.  Sold into slavery.  Exiled from his homeland.  Bartered like livestock.  Falsely accused.  Forgotten by those he tried to help. 

Overnight sensation?  Yes.  But overnight success?  Hardly.  Joseph had spent thirteen years “growing green.”  He’d been in God’s refining fire—and his heart is the proof. 

It’s hypocritical for us sinners to judge the protagonists of biblical accounts too harshly.  But let’s be honest—there’s nothing in the story of teenage Joseph to indicate that he did anything besides relish his father’s favoritism and manipulate his talents to impress (and irritate) his brothers.  A man that self-centered could never have been trusted with his own welfare, let alone that of an entire society.  But during his period of “growing green,” the deadness of Joseph’s heart blossomed into soft verdure.  When we see him after his trials, he is no longer the impulsive, indulgent adolescent but instead a righteous, discerning man wise enough to shepherd a nation through disaster and magnanimous enough to forgive his greatest enemies.  This change happened not overnight, but over years—lonely and painful and scary years.  When Joseph’s world saw him in his glory, they couldn’t begin to estimate how high the cost of his journey had been.

Don’t be deceived, my friends.  When you suffer through another gym workout, you are getting stronger.  When your efforts to love your spouse go unnoticed, you are getting kinder.  And in those dreadfully dark times—on the nights when your prayers feel like lead weights that could never rise to Heaven—during the days when another thing can’t possibly go wrong—when you wake in the morning and dread the coming hours—you are getting braver.  This is not death, but the beginning of life.  Your world may look like dead sticks to you, but inside your spirit, greatness is growing.  Greenness is coming.

I wish I could tell you that there truly is a magic moment, but there’s not.  No miracle pill or DIY hack or bypass route exists.  God won’t flip a switch and erase your pain, but He does promise that He will lovingly, tenderly, guide you through it.  And He assures you that in His economy, nothing is wasted.  It will take time.  It will take trust.  But one day, you’ll wake up, and your world will be green.  The temptation will be weaker.  Your marriage will be stronger.  Your work will be more meaningful, and your spirit will be lighter.  You may even be able to fit in those jeans.  You’ll look back and wonder when it happened, and then you’ll realize:  it’s been happening all along. 

So bask in that truth today.  And rejoice in the miracles of nature all around you.  It’s spring, and the wild, fierce melody of life and birth, joy and pain, running water and upwelling sap, leaf and bud and shoot and root and green, has begun once more—following its ancient course, still obeying a word slung from the lips of God at the beginning of time.  Listen closely to the song the green grass sings, for it’s in your heart as well.  Right now, in this moment, as long as you have made the decision to follow God, you are already growing green.