"It feels like spring," people said as they arrived at church Sunday morning. It had been raining, with the temperature well above freezing. Then, the sun came out with a burst of bright warmth. It was hard to believe the blizzard warnings.

Then, mid-afternoon the precipitation turned white. Wind in the trees sounded like a train. Sudden gusts whipped across the water. I had been digging a track for the water to flow away from the garage, but the slush in the bay and the puddles on the lane started to freeze.

As the wind shifted to the west, we were sheltered from the worst blasts but by Monday morning there was snow plastered on the windows of both sides of the house. Another snow day for many children, with roads closed across Grey County and a long way south.

One more storm with snowsqualls on the back side of it. We've had storms twice a week since early January. Alberta Clippers. Colorado Lows. The blizzard came with a Texas Low. And many of them brought squalls the day after. And we are not done yet. Another is on its way as I send off this column.

Meteorologists are cheerfully assuring us that spring will come in April. Before that we are going to get a blast of artic cold with the jet stream dipping low into the United States and aiming right at the Great Lakes. More storms will ride that line. I am afraid our ground hog was wrong. Winter isn't done with us.

The days are getting longer. Morning comes a little earlier, and it is not pitch black before supper. But clouds are burying the sun most of the time, and when it peeks through, there isn't much heat in it.

Still, the critters are sensing a shift in the seasons. Chickadees are singing a spring song. I've seen a raccoon, and there are rabbit tracks in our backyard. At the feeders, a black squirrel joined the red squirrels that never seem to sleep. It didn't stay out. It's back snuggled safe from the wind for now.

Some years, we've cultivated fields in March. This won't be one of them. This March I think it will be hard to believe in spring. We're going to be house bound and bundled up for a while yet.

But, when we finally turn the calendar from March to April, the days will be quite long. There will be heat in the sun when it shows through the cloud. The snow will melt. And as soon as it does, we will find that the crocus and daffodil bulbs have been swelling. Under the white blanket, plants are even now getting ready to take off.

No matter how hard the winter, the transforming power of spring will come.

As I ponder winter and the hope of spring, I am reminded of a letter written by one of the earliest followers of Jesus to the church in Corinth. When trying to explain the transformative power of God, Paul pointed to a seed. That hard kernel of wheat or barley that can be ground into bread can also be transformed into root and shoot, growing to be a plant that produces more seed.

Paul was convinced that God's power was at work to heal and make new. The letter itself demonstrates this hope and faith: he writes to a deeply fractured community about wholeness.

Spring brings relief and new life. Change breaks through the wall of winter. And that miracle reminds us that there is transformative power in the world. We don't have to give up when we hit the wall, whichever wall that might be. Personal and community barriers can be dismantled so a new way can come. Spring invites us and challenges us not to give up but to uncover the flow of renewal and new life.

We may not always be able to plant the same seeds. Things do come apart. Climate change is real. Lives shift. Ice once covered this land where we live, and that spring was a long time coming. But the glaciers that remain from that ice age feed rivers and lands today. Life in this earth presses on.

Cathy Hird is watching the ice come and go on the shore of Georgian Bay.