These pre-spring mornings I have been seeing flocks of geese soaring over the skyline, precursor to spring.  In her book Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings writes “I wonder what spring would mean to one who was encounter-ing it, if such a thing were conceivable, for the first time.”  For myself, I find the drama of spring’s arrival more magical than all the changing seasons.  Having too many springs behind me and too few remaining, I have resolved to wring out all the magic and splendor of this season possible and savor with all my senses all the splendid metaphors of the Resurrection.   My recent study of Matthew’s gospel has brought a deeper meaning of Jesus’ parable of the talents, wherein the man who was given only one talent failed to invest it for meaningful rewards, while those given more doubled their value.  The parable applies to each of us who claim citizenship in God’s kingdom, given the blessing of life itself.  Consider those who claim there is no Creator God, that their existence can be attributed to nothing more than an incredible random composite of molecules, and that this life ends it all without any assurance of an eternal life, no acceptance of the witness of hundreds in the first century of the risen Lord, and a rejection of the testimony of saints through the ages that Christ has been their intimate companion down the years.  Robert Wuthnow, Princeton sociologist, argues that most Americans spend the great bulk of their time and thought and energies, consumed by their jobs, locked into endless pursuit of power, cash, status or pleasure in the quest for personal happiness. He concludes: “We therefore go about our lives pretty much the same as those who have no faith at all.”  Gilbert Bowen calls this “functional atheism,” life lived without any need to take God into account in the decisions and activities of our daily lives. But in this parable, we are admonished to envision our life as an investment in service to and for others, all for the greater glory of God.  This insight was driven home to me in His words “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.”