Spring: A Time of Renewal in Life
Everything is budding and growing. It produces a newness, and also a renewal, and also vision in our human hearts.
We’ve been talking about winter, but now it’s time to move into spring.
Winter, beginning December 21, is a time of REVERENCE. Spring, beginning March 21, is a time of RENEWAL. Summer, beginning June 21, is a time of RESOLVE. Fall or Autumn, beginning September 21, is a time of REFLECTION. We’ll be looking at all of these seasons during 2021.
It’s Time For a Little ‘Spring Training’
Spring training is something that is mentioned in articles and books, and what it is intended to do is to give us a new outlook on spring. Spring might be called ‘spring training, and it’s meant to allow us to produce or recreate our renewable energy that might have been depleted in winter.
Spring Is a Time of Vision
It is a time of vision. It is meant to give us a new drive and purpose in life.
When spring arrives, we’re ready for a new season in life. Everything around us starts to sprout and bloom, and we are ready for the same thing in our life. It’s a time of renewal, where we leave some unwanted moods behind us.
I live in the Rocky Mountains and sometimes spring still carries with it some of winter’s chill. But things are changing, albeit perhaps more slowly than in some parts of the country. We don’t have any flowers yet, but there are new leaves and budding green grass. But it’s time for warmer, nicer weather. Change is screaming out all around us.
Spring is the Time For Roots to Sprout Growth
Our human roots sometimes get a little stale during winter, but in spring they tend to stabilize and become more firm and supportive. Jesus talks about a root problem in Mark 4:6. Spring is the time to overcome root problems.
The Apostle Paul talks about us being rooted and grounded in love, and also in other things that the GOSPEL of the New Testament talks about. But these things take time. They don’t happen overnight. In the Parable of Spontaneous Growth, Jesus shows that if we plant the right seeds inside of us (wheat and not weeds), then things grow and develop automatically. He says we don’t even know how seed does this — it just happens.
Thus Paul says it’s the gospel that produces good things from us (Col 1:5–6).
Spring is the Time For Us to Search For Truth
If we are followers of Jesus, we are meant to live in his truth. But for too many people, searching for truth becomes the end in itself. They never expect to really find it, and so they consult mediums, gurus, the stars, astrology, and countless other things trying to find the truth. But Jesus says he IS the truth. We are to believe the Messenger that God sent to us, and also the Message he brought us: his gospel truth and reality. It should straighten out our thinking. Paul calls it the renewal and transformation of our minds.
But truth is especially part of the renewal of spring. We should focus on it.
Things are being reborn in the spring: leaves and grass and everything else. Well, we are also told that it is the GOSPEL that ‘begets us,’ or gives us new birth in the truth of God (I Cor 4:15). When we let gospel truth guide us in everything we do, Paul says it establishes us in all of life (Rom 16:25).
When Jesus appeared before Pilate he said sarcastically, “What is truth?”
Jesus the truth was standing in front of him but Pilate was blind to it. And we too are blind to the truth if we disregard the gospel truth of Jesus.
The Problem of Impatience Enters the Room
A problem exists because many of us are put on ‘hold’ during winter. We haven’t grown as we should have. We’ve been more stagnant, like the grass and the flowers. So now that we’re in the springtime of our lives, we are impatient to see things happen the way we want them to.
We become more demanding of God too, wanting him to answer our prayers the way we want them answered. We pray in more of what we call ‘faith,’ and we want to see some type of miracle happen in our life. We don’t like delays.
We pray, “Lord, I want patience, and I want it right now!”
We often get impatient and even angry when people stand us up or are even late in meeting us. As a lawyer, I guess I learned to deal with this earlier in life. In the courtroom, the motto usually is ‘hurry up and wait.’ So I learned to take a book to read.
Impatience can often be changed to patience by removing the ‘IM’ before the word patient. Or, on the other hand, changing it to ‘I’M PATIENT.’
The last few years, I’ve been trying to deal with this in a little different way. Instead of feeding my impatience or frustrations, I pray for the person.
