I’m looking at my yard and surveying the damage. The winter was hard this year. My yard has never seen one this severe. My trees and shrubs took a beating. The cedar hedge looks like it has broken arms dangling at awkward angles. The magnolia tree has had branches ripped off from the heavy snow pack they couldn’t bear. My grass is compacted and the moss is surging again. I’m waiting for the chafer beetles to emerge and the crows, raccoons and skunks to make a mess of my lawn. It’s going to be a mess.
It’s going to take a bit of work to get it looking good again. Where do I start? When will the rain stop and allow me to get out there and do something, or should I just grin and bear it and work in the rain? And all the choices I have to make: cut the branch off or tie it back, pull that shrub or give it a shot of fertilizer and hope it comes back, dig out the grass and reseed?
Sometimes we go through tough seasons. Experiences of life’s losses, changes in life, transitions, and disappointments sometimes pile up and cause some brokenness. Sometimes we go through tough seasons in the church. Expectations and realities sometimes don’t match up. People move on to other churches and those left behind wonder what’s wrong with us. Where do you start to turn things around? What needs to be tended and what needs to be let go?
Amazingly, there are also signs of beauty in my yard. Snowdrops are blooming where a heap of snow just melted. Crocuses are coming up, and the tulips are just popping their heads out of the dirt. Helleborus, forsythia, irises are all coming out yet again. Soon we’ll see rhododendrons, azaleas, redbuds, lilacs and I might even be suckered into planting tomatoes again (I have such bad luck with tomatoes!).
There are signs of beauty and strength in our lives. There are people who love us from year to year, through the transitions. There are new people who God sends to us who become unlikely blessings. Old songs and new songs continue to move us to deeper faith. God’s word still speaks to us in fresh ways, moving us to serve as Jesus served. New spiritual practices allow new life to burst out in our lives.
Seasons come and seasons go. Burdens make way to beauty. Gardeners tend to the rhythms of the seasons and coax the beautiful things to be revealed. Jesus says that his father is a Gardener, who prunes branches and who plants trees with the expectation of fruit. It’s always hard to be pruned and dug up. But there is also hope of new and beautiful life just waiting to blossom. Fleetwood CRC is a good garden. It’s constantly changing and that’s the wonder of it.