Winter’s ice is softening around the edges of the lakes now, the white giving way to dappled gray as the first of the geese make their way home. Death is ceding ground to life in the lakes and woods. The sap is running in the maple trees, and birds are showing up at the feeders outside my window.

I remember another Spring day; a day when hope first blossomed in my soul. The day when Jesus found me. My heart softened like the spring woods as new life struggled up inside me, longing and wonder reaching toward the light. That moment—that memory—never gets old.

I shrug on flannel and boots, step outside to breathe the cool air, feeling the sun warm my head, my face in these woods on the edge of awakening. How can it be? I ask myself. Fifty years down the narrow path, it hasn’t lost its wonder. I barely remember the before that defined my after, the B.C./A.D. line that divided my life, and yet I remain captivated at the miracle of being sought, and found.

My conversion was a simple one, perched on a log there by Strawberry Creek. The transformation, not so much. The steps leading from there to here as convoluted as any, I suppose. And yet here I am, five decades later, still in awe of it all. In awe of Him—the One who saw me. Who loved me. Who loves me still.

I tell my story again, and tears press hard in gratitude. I am fifty years into this great adventure, still running, eagerly stretching toward the goal, seeing the finish line inch ever closer as the gray hairs overtake the brown in my bathroom mirror. I open my Bible to a familiar passage, the page marked and underlined from dozens, perhaps hundreds, of past readings, and draw in a breath. There – why have I never noticed it before? A simple, yet transformative, truth catches my eye. This book, living and active – it never gets old.

Decay is the way of life on this planet. Spring marches on toward winter. Bodies slow. Flowers wilt and wither. But faith is a rebellious offering in a fading world, its heartbeat strengthening as the shadows lengthen, the miracle of it all growing only more precious.

The snow starts falling again. It has been a long, hard winter up here in the northwoods. But this new layer of white will be short-lived, as the earth tilts every more imperceptibly toward the sun, bringing warmth and life even now struggling to the surface under the ice. And I sense the day coming, when faith will be sight and I will break free from winter’s grip on my soul with laughter, into a Spring of everlasting daffodils shining in the sun.

Into a place that never gets old.

“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

Isaiah 46:4