Infant Buds and Growing Seasons
I just glanced out our window through the pouring rain and noticed our maple tree in the backyard. Suddenly everything around me is budding! It's beautiful. I love maple trees and have often admired them in other people's yards, but I've never had one of my own. Watching it through the seasons has prompted some deep thoughts.
I've always loved to garden. I come from a long line of gardeners, so I suppose it's only fitting. We've owned a house before, and I loved gardening there too. There's something spiritual, for lack of a better word, about gardening: we plant bulbs and seeds, water them faithfully, wait expectantly, until suddenly one day a plant appears. I know the physiology behind it--photosynthesis, and plant nutrition, and all of the science that explains how it happens. But in spite of all of that, there's something deeply allegorical about gardening. We plant seeds on faith, tend them diligently, and hope for an outcome that is always far off at first. The initial growth happens under the surface, with very little help from us-- some unseen force working on the seeds to produce life.
Maybe it's because life is so full of noise these days that most of my spiritual insight and growth happen in the midst of life, as a result of the noise and the moments. Maybe it's because gardening forces me to stop and be still, to be quiet and think while I work. Whatever the reason, gardening in this house, in this season, has been different. It's become a reverent place, a place where I am always touched by some insight.
Today as I looked at the maple tree, I marveled at the tiny red buds covering the branches. Infant leaves. What amazed me was the process by which the tree is regenerated each year. Those same branches were covered with full, mature leaves last fall. And now, after a winter of barrenness, they are beginning over. What was there before had to die away completely in order for the tree to grow, and the new growth starts at the very beginning: infant buds. I wondered about growth in my own life. How often I've felt like God was undoing everything I had already accomplished, stripping me back to some infant stage. Why? Why undo what was already there? And yet, he works that way in nature. Why should it surprise me if the spiritual version of growth mirrors it? Sometimes we are stripped away, taken back to the bare branches; left barren, at times, for a season; and then the new growth comes. Of course, not all plants grow in that way. Some remain full through all of the seasons. Some only lose part of their growth. Some periods of growth are like that for us, too. But it's comforting to know that when the accomplishments we thought we'd gained are being stripped away, when the things at which we excel are no longer useful, it could be that we're entering a new season. It could be that it's time for the old to die away, the branches to be laid bare, and those tender new infant buds to take their place.
I've always loved to garden. I come from a long line of gardeners, so I suppose it's only fitting. We've owned a house before, and I loved gardening there too. There's something spiritual, for lack of a better word, about gardening: we plant bulbs and seeds, water them faithfully, wait expectantly, until suddenly one day a plant appears. I know the physiology behind it--photosynthesis, and plant nutrition, and all of the science that explains how it happens. But in spite of all of that, there's something deeply allegorical about gardening. We plant seeds on faith, tend them diligently, and hope for an outcome that is always far off at first. The initial growth happens under the surface, with very little help from us-- some unseen force working on the seeds to produce life.
Maybe it's because life is so full of noise these days that most of my spiritual insight and growth happen in the midst of life, as a result of the noise and the moments. Maybe it's because gardening forces me to stop and be still, to be quiet and think while I work. Whatever the reason, gardening in this house, in this season, has been different. It's become a reverent place, a place where I am always touched by some insight.
Today as I looked at the maple tree, I marveled at the tiny red buds covering the branches. Infant leaves. What amazed me was the process by which the tree is regenerated each year. Those same branches were covered with full, mature leaves last fall. And now, after a winter of barrenness, they are beginning over. What was there before had to die away completely in order for the tree to grow, and the new growth starts at the very beginning: infant buds. I wondered about growth in my own life. How often I've felt like God was undoing everything I had already accomplished, stripping me back to some infant stage. Why? Why undo what was already there? And yet, he works that way in nature. Why should it surprise me if the spiritual version of growth mirrors it? Sometimes we are stripped away, taken back to the bare branches; left barren, at times, for a season; and then the new growth comes. Of course, not all plants grow in that way. Some remain full through all of the seasons. Some only lose part of their growth. Some periods of growth are like that for us, too. But it's comforting to know that when the accomplishments we thought we'd gained are being stripped away, when the things at which we excel are no longer useful, it could be that we're entering a new season. It could be that it's time for the old to die away, the branches to be laid bare, and those tender new infant buds to take their place.
