The time is now.
Even though it looks like not much is happening.
I’m astonished this year by the pace at which farm projects need to be completed in order to keep up with the growth that is coming. I also believe that this is a solid model of the spiritual life. What is remarkable about this time is that very few things are presently in bloom. Sure, buds are just beginning to express themselves on the tree branches, and the pasture is not as brown this week as it was last week. But all of these little changes herald an explosion of activity and new life in the next four weeks. If Terese and I don’t manage the preparations now, we will be unprepared to manage and magnify the fruitfulness that is coming.
In the last month, we have cut away paths in the woods to install electric fence. The honeysuckle is just beginning to bloom. Tick season is right around the corner. I could have easily missed the window I had to put electric fence up.
Two weeks ago, we pruned all the fruit trees in our Orchard. Just in the nick of time. It’s important to do the pruning before the sap rises and the tree organizes how it distributes its vital resources into leaves or fruit buds.
We just finished planting indoor seeds. As far as that goes, I might actually be a little on the late side for some of the plants. I think we’ll make it, though.
We grafted peach stems onto tree stock capable of supporting stone fruit. I think the timing was perfect. The sap is rising, it’s still cool outside, and the tree can make connections with the graft without losing much moisture or being threatened by warm weather.
Baby chicks arrived last week, and they are in the brooder. Within the last week, they have nearly doubled in size. Another few weeks, and they will be outside in a brooder under lamps. Just in time for spring, and warmer weather.
For five days now, there has been an incessant chorus of frogs down at our cattle pond. 24 hours a day, all day long. The clouds have risen higher in the sky, and the moisture content has gone up. Thunderheads tower over the landscape. Temperature swings are more intense. Yesterday morning it was 90°. This morning, and 2 inches of rain later, it is 45°.
Seriously, there is a flurry of activity right now. The pace is really picking up! And it’s all motivated by this particular window of weather that provokes fruitfulness.
For me, a hobby farmer with a different primary vocation, this is what “seizing the opportunity” looks like. For me, now, it seems to have visible spiritual parallels. Goodness, it’s taken me several decades to realize this. When the Holy Spirit begins to stir the heart, the time is now! Today is the day of the Lord. If we are experiencing the impulse of the Holy Spirit to make a decision, to make a move, it is because the time and the circumstances are exactly right for that move, for that decision. If I wait another week before deciding, the circumstances will have changed, and the power of the decision the Holy Spirit is prompting me to make will likely be diminished. Or come to a different effect.
This present time of coming fruitfulness is demonstrating to me how terrible it is when I presume that I will have time tomorrow. Or the week after, or the following month. I don’t mean to say that I endorse anxiety about everything that I must do, or tend obsessively to my crazy task list that is not at all reasonable. I do mean to say, that there are times and seasons for things, and if you don’t do the thing the season calls for, you will miss both the opportunity to do it and the reward of having done it.
“Today is the day, harden not your hearts.” Pay attention and see what is happening: “He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather; for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” Matthew 16:2,3.
I have more than just a few friends who have been marveling at the outpouring of grace and miraculous conversion they have witnessed in others they never expected to come to Christ. There has been an explosion of testimony about people seeing, experiencing, and feeling the presence of God in their lives in a tangible way that has brought about real change. Is this not a sign of the times? What is this saying about the times? Is this not in some way similar to the appearance of fruit buds on a tree, or flowers on the vine that is the Lord in his church? Is this not an indication of a bountiful harvest by a Master Gardener, who knows what he’s doing?
It makes me think about what I’m doing that I shouldn’t be doing, and what I’m not doing that I should be doing. The day of the Lord is definitely coming. For me. For you. For all of us. Some of us will have the experience of being robbed, for we will experience it as thieves coming in the night, caught unawares.
Is He really calling for fruit in my life? Jesus talks about his Father pruning us. Jesus curses a fruitless fig tree (that bears no fruit in the off-season - of all times!) causing its death. The first story in the Bible is set in a garden. The One who ordered it wanders its lanes looking for the stewards of that garden. The Lord knows gardening and seasons. He knows us and the seasons of our lives.
Where do I need the Lord‘s grace to see with more clarity the subtle movements that he is enjoining upon me and my circumstance so that I might prepare for His day, for His harvest, for the fruitfulness that He is growing in me and in my family? There are definitely times for things.
What does the end of winter and the coming spring time evoke for you in your spiritual life?