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With March comes the realistic anticipation of Spring…. Plants spring back to life, and gardeners and farmers are busy preparing the soil and plants big and small to produce the fresh fruit and vegetables that we enjoy. It is quite a contrast to the bleakness that has surrounded us these past several months.
With the limited information of fall and winter, we could easily conclude that most of our plant life has died. But nothing could be further from the truth. Plants become dormant, storing energy in their roots, so that they can be ready for spring and the rush of new life and growth. And as with much of creation, this can be a metaphor for us in our walks of faith. There are times when the Lord is quiet, when our ministries seem stalled, when we are more tired than excited. But that does not mean that the indwelling Holy Spirit is done with us!
The early chapters of Genesis tells us a lot about our God, the God of creation. He is the God of teeming life and productivity:
The God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in the, and it was so. Genesis 1:11.
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it….
And here we are, millennia later, serving our Creator, who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. We have been created to bear fruit for His kingdom! But unlike the plants that the Lord created, we need the Lord’s direct help in order to bear the fruit He is calling us to produce.
I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine-dresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit…Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
We will invariably find ourselves in a season of pruning at times. But Spring reminds us that our Creator and Redeemer has created us to bear eternal, glorious fruit for His kingdom. He invites us to nurture an abiding relationship in Him so that we can know the joy of doing so.
