I mentioned in my previous post how March can get a bad rap known to be... Brown. Drab. Mud. Bare.
Yes, it is all true and in this season, we long for warmth and color.
Let's continue on this journey to see what is within and the possibilities that lie within the soil and trees. I'm continuing to invite you to look beyond and maybe if you think of the tree for who and what it is - it just may shift your thoughts about this season of not yet - the in between of winter and the warm spring air.
You see, sometimes I find it quite real and true of myself and relate with the bare, brown, and mundane landscape of the March season.
What you see across the landscape is the brown and bareness of the trees, as they stand in the mundane, common, and with vulnerability. The trees and ground are void of the color of the sharp green grass, the yellow daffodils, the green that fills the branches of the trees, the various colors of the flowers that will eventually shoot forth and grace us with their beauty.
But let's stop for a moment and pause. What you see of the tree and the ground is really what creates the space for all that beauty. As the tree stands, stripped and bare of visible color and life, it stands vulnerable with life within.
I remember vividly a long season that I passed through the typical four seasons and stayed in the one that found me bare and void of visible productivity. As I was taking a walk one afternoon and the sun was gracing the brown and the bare trees, the thought flashed through my mind - 'it's beautiful.'
Wait. What? Brown and bare = beautiful; no way!
Life is more than the fruit, the leaves, and the color. Life is really what is within. For the fruit, the leaves, and the color only happen as a result of what is within. If the tree is dead within, no visible life will happen without or at least not for very long and most certainly won't withstand a wind storm.
This spoke to me and I saw the bare and brown of the landscape as beautiful in its own way for it truly holds the truest of life.
I, too, find myself in seasons and times that leave me stripped and bare. But like the tree as it puts its roots down, resting and replenishing itself for the coming spring and summer's growth; I too, am called to put my roots down in Jesus, learning more of who He is.
He is Life and wants me to know Him as the Abundant Life.
Life within matters more than visible life without. As the sun's rays warm the earth we see the stirrings of that life come to the surface.
The maple trees are tapped as the sun's warming rays stir the life within. Sap is turned into syrup which we enjoy on our pancakes. Grass starts to turn green. The trees take on the hue of the emerging colour of leaves. The new shoots of green that burst forth as spring daffodils, forsythia, lilacs, snowdrops and more start to color the landscape is invigorating.
In the mundane, the normal, the bareness creates a space to appreciate all this emerging life that laid silent within the earth and trees.
To know color and the beauty of flowers we must know the season of rest and life within. If there was always production, always a giving, when would we and nature ever rest and replenish?
So, as the white winter gives way to muddy March and the cold winds that still blow - stay. Stay and remember the season of growth cannot be hurried and there is something right now that grows us, within, if we train our eyes to see life.
Maybe God is inviting you to sit in this season of bare, mundane, and vulnerability to learn more of who are in Him without any external validation.
Maybe He is inviting you to understand the life within that is stirring, unseen but oh so alive, just waiting for the warmth of spring to stir it to something more - the birthing of life without.
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