I think it is completely appropriate that my last few blogs have gone from discussing winter, to waking up, and now that it is April, spring is here. I can hear the birds chirping outside my window. The trees sway in the breeze, the garden is starting to bloom, and walking down my road the sweet smell of the flowers is overwhelmingly pleasant. Being outside is completely uplifting to the soul.
We have been to a lot of places, and experienced a lot of seasons in the last few years. Texas summers were HOT. I mean ridiculously hot. The kind of hot that can make you crabby, and keep you feeling in a constant state of desperately needing a shower. In the fall of 2011 we moved to Alaska. Autumn in Alaska is gorgeous. The breeze is cool, everything smells like pumpkins, and the leaves won't. stop. falling. Alaskan winters are breathtakingly beautiful. The scenery is majestic and it can leave you speechless. But the winters are long. Sometimes it can feel like the winter will never end. The snow will never stop falling, and the leaves will never be fruitful again.
Winter symbolizes death.
The fruit on the tree has been harvested, the leaves have died and fallen, and the tree stands bare and naked, appearing dead and fruitless. The chill of the wind makes everything feel numb. The earth is covered in white, and it seems like life has been stolen from everything. The freeze makes things fragile, limbs crack and break helplessly. The world accepts its burial under a blanket of snow.
We all look at trees in the winter and think in the epic battle of tree vs. winter freeze, Old Jack Frost has won and there the weak tree stands, stripped and battered. What most people don't know (and normal people, unlike me, don't think about) is how a tree is able to resume life in the spring. While most plants retreat in winter, even surrendering to death up to their roots and hiding in the warm ground, trees have an amazing defense mechanism enabling them to be completely exposed, yet survive. The obvious chemical changes in a tree cause the leaves to turn brilliant colors and fall. But the covert defenses of a tree are even more miraculous. Without going into too much nerdy detail, the processes that occur on a cellular level go beyond what even science can recreate. My point is, the tree didn't just take it. Though it shut down the processes that make it fruitful and beautiful, it stayed in an active state of defense. The tree was fully aware and fully prepared for what most of us fail to see in our own lives; seasons are inevitable. You cannot escape it.
God gave us every season in our lives. Let me repeat that. GOD gave us every season. I am not including mistakes that you made where you stepped out of God's will. I am talking about seasons of struggle, seasons of pain, seasons of uncertainty where you have absolutely nothing to lean on but the promises of God. Seasons when you feel absolutely frozen, fruitless and dead. Seasons when you feel like you can't hold the weight of the ice and the snow that just won't stop falling. Seasons when you feel like God left.
Let me tell you that in those seasons of my life God was doing in me exactly what He designed in those trees. He was building up my defenses. His strength was becoming mine, and He was proving His faithfulness and omnipotence to me.
Let me pause and say that I didn't feel strong in those seasons. I didn't feel God's strength, or God's faithfulness, or His omnipotence. I didn't feel anything but dead and weak. There were nights when all I could do was claim God's promises over and over again, fighting the fear and doubt that surrounded me. Some nights all I could do was cry and pray, and cry and pray some more. Some nights the only thing I could whisper was "Jesus". Jesus. Over and over, Jesus. Nothing but God was stronger than what I was going through, and no one but God kept me.
Like a tree, I may have stopped producing fruit. I may have shed all of the leaves, with all of the joy and brightness that made me look full and beautifully blessed. I may have felt vulnerable, stripped, and cold like that tree, and when you saw me maybe you only saw death and defeat. But God...
God was covertly setting up His defenses in my life. While destruction knocked on my door, GOD had his Angels on guard behind it, keeping it shut tight. Every time death begged God for my life, GOD said "no". And when the enemy roared and lied to me about how my story was going to end, God was writing a new chapter entitled "Victory".
We have been to a lot of places, and experienced a lot of seasons in the last few years. Texas summers were HOT. I mean ridiculously hot. The kind of hot that can make you crabby, and keep you feeling in a constant state of desperately needing a shower. In the fall of 2011 we moved to Alaska. Autumn in Alaska is gorgeous. The breeze is cool, everything smells like pumpkins, and the leaves won't. stop. falling. Alaskan winters are breathtakingly beautiful. The scenery is majestic and it can leave you speechless. But the winters are long. Sometimes it can feel like the winter will never end. The snow will never stop falling, and the leaves will never be fruitful again.
Winter symbolizes death.
The fruit on the tree has been harvested, the leaves have died and fallen, and the tree stands bare and naked, appearing dead and fruitless. The chill of the wind makes everything feel numb. The earth is covered in white, and it seems like life has been stolen from everything. The freeze makes things fragile, limbs crack and break helplessly. The world accepts its burial under a blanket of snow.
We all look at trees in the winter and think in the epic battle of tree vs. winter freeze, Old Jack Frost has won and there the weak tree stands, stripped and battered. What most people don't know (and normal people, unlike me, don't think about) is how a tree is able to resume life in the spring. While most plants retreat in winter, even surrendering to death up to their roots and hiding in the warm ground, trees have an amazing defense mechanism enabling them to be completely exposed, yet survive. The obvious chemical changes in a tree cause the leaves to turn brilliant colors and fall. But the covert defenses of a tree are even more miraculous. Without going into too much nerdy detail, the processes that occur on a cellular level go beyond what even science can recreate. My point is, the tree didn't just take it. Though it shut down the processes that make it fruitful and beautiful, it stayed in an active state of defense. The tree was fully aware and fully prepared for what most of us fail to see in our own lives; seasons are inevitable. You cannot escape it.
God gave us every season in our lives. Let me repeat that. GOD gave us every season. I am not including mistakes that you made where you stepped out of God's will. I am talking about seasons of struggle, seasons of pain, seasons of uncertainty where you have absolutely nothing to lean on but the promises of God. Seasons when you feel absolutely frozen, fruitless and dead. Seasons when you feel like you can't hold the weight of the ice and the snow that just won't stop falling. Seasons when you feel like God left.
Let me tell you that in those seasons of my life God was doing in me exactly what He designed in those trees. He was building up my defenses. His strength was becoming mine, and He was proving His faithfulness and omnipotence to me.
Let me pause and say that I didn't feel strong in those seasons. I didn't feel God's strength, or God's faithfulness, or His omnipotence. I didn't feel anything but dead and weak. There were nights when all I could do was claim God's promises over and over again, fighting the fear and doubt that surrounded me. Some nights all I could do was cry and pray, and cry and pray some more. Some nights the only thing I could whisper was "Jesus". Jesus. Over and over, Jesus. Nothing but God was stronger than what I was going through, and no one but God kept me.
Like a tree, I may have stopped producing fruit. I may have shed all of the leaves, with all of the joy and brightness that made me look full and beautifully blessed. I may have felt vulnerable, stripped, and cold like that tree, and when you saw me maybe you only saw death and defeat. But God...
God was covertly setting up His defenses in my life. While destruction knocked on my door, GOD had his Angels on guard behind it, keeping it shut tight. Every time death begged God for my life, GOD said "no". And when the enemy roared and lied to me about how my story was going to end, God was writing a new chapter entitled "Victory".
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