Florida has apparently decided that you can have too many seasons.

Better to keep things simple and just have one.

Even the license plates are a constant reminder.

Florida, they say, endless summer.

Well, at the risk of sounding ungrateful about having to wear sunblock the entire year round,

one of the things I loved best about England was

winter becoming spring. Just when you thought you were right in the dead of winter, when even

the daylight struggled to get out of bed, when going outside took as much preparation as an

astronaut preparing to step outside his lunar module, you'd suddenly notice something that wasn't there the day before.

There, poking through the snow, was a flower.

A snowdrop.

There is something very subversive about the snowdrop.

It's tiny, the pebbles are almost invisible against the snow,

and yet it looks up at you and says,

You see all this dead cold darkness?

It's finished. I overcame the dead cold earth, and I'm only the first. I'm just the beginning.

The snowdrop, I think, is like the Gospel. It's the

announcement that death and darkness is on borrowed time. It says that life has already entered

the world almost unseen and has begun to restore and renew all creation.

Our English word gospel comes from the Old English God spell, God meaning good and spell

meaning news. So gospel means good news. So good in fact that if you think the gospel is

anything less than the best news you've ever heard or ever could hear,

...