Saint Patrick's Day Thoughts

Are you wearing green today??

When you have an Irish woman on your team, you have to show solidarity with her on Saint Patrick's Day!

I loved talking with Rachel after our weekly team meeting. She told me more about the significance of Saint Patrick's Day and why we should be remembering this man of God who, when he was 16, was captured by Irish pirates from his home in Britain and taken to Ireland where he was a slave for six years before escaping.

Years later, God called him back to the very place were he'd been enslaved, and he spent his life there as a Christian missionary, sharing the truths of God with the Irish.

And why is the shamrock significant on Saint Patrick's Day?

I love that Rachel baked us shamrock cookies for our weekly meeting today!

Legend credits St. Patrick with teaching the Irish about the doctrine of the Trinity by showing people the shamrock, a three-leafed plant, using it to illustrate the Christian teaching of three persons in one God. 

And for that reason the shamrock became a central symbol for St Patrick's Day. 

While this holiday has, for many, become more about beer drinking, corned beef and merry making, the real reason for it is something much more compelling. Praise God for this man who gave his life to sharing Christ with the Irish people.

And in other news and thoughts on this day...it feels like spring has arrived on this Saint Patrick's Day here in Czech!

While downtown Frydlant to run some errands, I saw this blanket of crocuses in a yard there. What a spectacular sight!

It's always surprising how much these flowers lift my spirit when they push out through the ground early in spring. They fill me with hope and delight that spring really IS coming!

My own purple crocuses outside my kitchen window.

Whether its literal or metaphorical, I hope you have some purple crocuses in your life right now that give you hope for a new day that's coming.