It's Official! Spring has sprung here in Nashville and all the world is waking up again. There's something about the color green that restores my soul. I remind myself during bleak Winter months that new life is purposefully guarded and concealed until the appropriate time for its unearthing has come. And when it comes it is a SIGHT to behold. I call it green glory.
I love seasons because they are such a metaphor of life and living, they teach us something of faith and hope, of trust and perseverance. As I read Isaiah 42:9 today I was struck with the encouragement scripture brings to us in our own seasons of waiting. God is the One who "laid out the earth and all that grows from it" who breathes life into us and makes us "alive with His own life." So staggering! Our growth is hidden in Him. Our life is hidden in His life. Everything flows from THIS relationship. Everything. He grows us in Holy secrecy in a work that begins and ends in our hearts, in a work that begins and ends with His own words, His Spirit and His purposes for us.
We live in a culture thriving for growth and ultimately for connection and how good when we remember that while "we have many resources, we only have one Source." (Tony Evans) God is the One who sowed the seed of our very life, who allows our roots to reach down deep as we trust Him in seasons of darkness and who then sends sacred moments of Sun to follow the downpour of life. We are His open fields, we are wounds that heal. God is in the work of renewal and regrowth. There is no ground His love can't reclaim. He is ever in the work of making all things new and in doing a work that no man can do.
The God Who Makes Us Alive with His Own Life
5-9 God’s Message,
the God who created the cosmos, stretched out the skies,
laid out the earth and all that grows from it,
Who breathes life into earth’s people,
makes them alive with his own life:
“I am God. I have called you to live right and well.
I have taken responsibility for you, kept you safe.
I have set you among my people to bind them to me,
and provided you as a lighthouse to the nations,
To make a start at bringing people into the open, into light:
opening blind eyes,
releasing prisoners from dungeons,
emptying the dark prisons.
I am God. That’s my name.
I don’t franchise my glory,
don’t endorse the no-god idols.
Take note: The earlier predictions of judgment have been fulfilled.
I’m announcing the new salvation work.
Before it bursts on the scene,
I’m telling you all about it.”
Isaiah 42:9The Message (MSG)