Seasons... My Conversation with a Tree!

Creationswap.com/Cody Jensen

Just last night I shared with a friend how a one-way conversation with a tree helped me to understand God's seasons, so I thought it an appropriate topic for this week's blog.

Before I moved to Indianapolis, I lived in a condo/townhouse development in Jersey City, a placed called Society Hill. I owned a two-bedroom garden level condo, and right outside my door was a tree. It was a small tree, as it was planted when they developed the community, just a little more than 10 years prior.

It was the beginning of spring and we had a rain shower. It was pouring. I stood inside my screen door looking outside and this tree caught my attention. Ironically enough, this tree began to minister to me about the seasons.

Winter was ending and we were on the brink of spring. The tree would bud white flowers in the beginning of spring. I watched them fall from the tree because of the wind and the rain. I became conscious of the fact that I generally paid little attention to the change process of this tree as a result of my hurried life. My last recollection of the tree was that it was bare during the cold of winter.

My thoughts turned to how this tree was now transitioning. It withstood the cold, snow, ice, and bitter winds of the winter months. That year the winter was brutal, yet the tree survived the storms and conditions of that season. I remembered how the cold winds would blow and although the tree would bow, the tree would bend, and at times some of the branches would fall from the tree, it never fell. It was well rooted into the ground and withstood the circumstances of the season.

Now in the midst of the first storms of spring, I began to see the first signs of the beauty beginning to unfold; transitioning from its bare existence to a budding, beautiful creation, knowing that very soon it would be in full bloom and I would witness the white buds turn to pink and then to a rich green by summer. In the fall, the green leaves turn to shades of red and orange and then they would begin to fall from the tree. The fallen leaves had endured another season, but they would never again be a part of the life of the tree and the tree would again enter into another harsh season of winter.

I closed my door and came back into the house with my mind very much on this revelation about a tree. In the midst of my thought process, it was revealed to me that it really wasn't about the tree at all. It was a symbol of how our lives transition and the seasons divinely orchestrated by God.

We experience winters, storms, trials and turbulence... times when we are bare and exposed to the harsh realities of life. Just like the tree we bow, we bend, we lose some of our branches, but when we remain rooted in God and things of God, we are equipped, just like the tree to STAND! Our roots take hold to the foundation, the Christ within us and we hold on and hold out and anticipate the next season, a new season.

Our spring brings about a change and we begin to show signs of new life emitting from our very being. While we endured the winter, God was doing a "new" thing enabling us to grow and live in the fullness of this new season.

Just like a tree, if we continue to live, we'll enter into another fall season, when we will again shed more of our former selves. Our outer shell (just as the trunk of the tree hardens) will toughen up in preparation for another winter.

We will enter into another set of seasons, never to repeat the same. (i.e., they'll always be different... some winters will be more severe than others, some summers will be warmer and more enjoyable than others). One thing's for sure, we will continue to have seasons as they are designed to foster growth and newness...

Just like a tree, as we embrace our seasons, we shed the "old" of the former season and put on the "new" of the next season always anxious to reach summer.

So, let us embrace our seasons as they, over time, will develop us (just like a tree) into beautiful, statuesque, strong, well-rooted creations of God!

To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal ...
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance ...
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek;
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Seasonally yours,

~Dee
A Woman Assigned!