My Father is the Gardener

I'm so at a loss as to where to begin this post.
For so long I have been waiting for the moment when I actually, truly, and deeply felt the love of God. I'm, in general, aware of His love but, in general, I have not felt it in a long time. 


I can look around me and see things that tell me, "Yes, of course God loves me." But at the same time, I see things and I feel like they were signs of God and that He was somewhere else.. like He had left his signs but was attending to other business around the world, other hearts, other needs, other more desperate people. For so long I have just been waiting for Him to come back. And All the while I knew that I was waiting for myself to come back to Him. 


Last fall I heard a speaker talking about creating space for God. If you make a space, He moves into it. Simple as that. And I feel like I have been making space and effort and *trying* to invite God to be near me again and for me to feel His love and His gentle touch. But I've been waiting was all it was. If you read my blog often, you'll know that I have struggled quite a bit with the thought that there is something wrong with me for my walk with God to not have joy all the time. I've thought of myself as a horrible Christian in the times that I was not over-abundant in producing the kinds of fruits that God has appointed me as a believer to produce.  I thought, "Surely there is something I'm doing wrong. Surely God must be saddened if not disappointed in how my walk is not actively producing fruit."


For so long I have guilted myself and chided myself and criticized myself for not being a good enough Christian to do the simple task of producing fruit by remaining in Christ.  On Wednesday I encountered a truth that totally blew that myth out of the water and joy has been bursting from within me. 


On Wednesday, I was given a cd to listen to that had a radio interview with a guy who wrote a book about being with God through all seasons of life. Now, life seasons is not a new concept for me. I'm in college, I feel like my life seasons are CONSTANTLY changing. Highschool season is past, freshman year awkward time season has past, sophomore year dorm room roommate drama season is over, I'm in a season of dating, Im in a season of planning to graduate... lots of seasons. 


But, the guy I listened had a different take on seasons. He was talking about our Spiritual walk and how we have our seasons of Spring awakenings and bountiful harvests and fall beauties. But the season that really got my attention was the Winter season that our souls go through. The time when we are not producing fruit or preparing for harvest or springing up new flowers and running in grassy meadows picking daisies and napping in the warm rays of the Son after swimming in a lake of grace.  


The time that Christians don't talk about because they think there is something wrong with them for not always producing fruit or bringing in a harvest. He talked about how the church places is so much emphasis on bearing fruit that when Christians encounter the Winter season, they just feel like that did something wrong and that they are bad Christians. 


This concept that I never grasped before is this: We're not perpetually in summertime, we're not perpetually in harvest. We do not perpetually bear fruit. Whaaaaat?? Not always producing/bearing fruit even though we're walking with Jesus?? How can this be??


It's almost funny that I didn't get this before because I grew up in a farming community and am the daughter of an agricultural engineer.  I've lived in Iowa my whole life and have experienced 20 winters. I've watched the leaves fall of the trees and the snow and ice and cold settle in while the day shortens and the day seems more dark than light. I've seen the fields look empty and dead. I've seen the trees look lifeless and ominous. The flowers are no where to be seen and and water in the creek no longer flows with graceful trickles on the rocks. The birds aren't there to sing and the nothing much can be heard besides the cold wind blowing across the empty fields.


 And of course all through those long, cold winters I had this hope that Spring would someday come and the grass would be green, the birds would come back to sing, the flowers would bloom, the trees would fill with green leaves and blossoms and the garden would be planted and we could look forward to 100s of watermelons and tomatoes and strawberries and other such wonderful bounties. I don't remember that I ever looked out the large window in our living room at the snow filled garden with lifeless trees all around and thought, "those trees don't have apples on them, there must be something wrong with them." 
Or "I don't see any watermelons or tomatoes growing, clearly our garden is horrible because it is not producing fruit right now."  The would have been so ridiculous! 


But, I have been chained with guilt for a while thinking, "My walk with Christ is not producing fruit, there must be something wrong." When I first hear that Christians experience a winter season that is absolutely okay to experience as well as necessary, I became fascinated and began reading scholarly journals and plant websites and other crazy science things that I would otherwise never be interested in about plants and fruit trees and the winter time. 


This is what I found, trees go through something called a "dormancy" period during the wintertime. 
I took the following from a website on fruit trees and I imagined that the trees were my own walk with God as I read it:

After fruit trees have produced a bountiful harvest in the fall, they go into a dormant period. "Dormant" means that the tree's activity slows to the point that it looks inactive. Decreases in photosynthesis occur and growth for the year effectively stops.

With the onset of cooler weather, a fruit tree will begin the process of going dormant. The first and most obvious sign is that the leaves turn from green to an autumn color and then fall off. Sap movement slows down as well. While the tree looks lifeless, it is still taking in water and nutrients, just at a much slower and reduced rate. Root and branch growth essentially stops for the dormant period but the roots do not die.

When fruit trees go dormant and the sap slows down, it's a perfect time to prune back the trees. Pruning branches during the dormant time will harm the tree the least and is easier to do than if the tree were full of thick leafy branches. During a fruit tree's dormant period, trim off any diseased, dead or overlapping branches. This will strengthen the tree and allow new spring growth to start unhindered. Also, it prepares the tree for heavy winter storms by eliminating branches that may not be structurally sound enough to support snow or ice.

That is such a big deal. There is so much freedom in KNOWING that it's okay to not be producing fruit all the time. Especially since I'm a Bible study leader, I just have felt this great pressure to be always in a state of harvest and joy and spiritual summertime. When I don't feel like I'm there at a state of fruit and harvest and joy and summertime, I've felt like I've had to mask it by seeming like I'm there because as a leader, I just be spiritually healthy all the time. 
What I didn't know that it *IS* spiritually healthy to not be producing fruit sometimes. To not be happy clappy in love with Jesus all the time. It's okay as long as it's not because I'm apathetic in my walk or neglecting Jesus all together. 


I think its a big deal that God uses our wintertimes to cut back on the things we don't need and to prune us to be part of a greater harvest later on. It hurts less to be pruned when we're in a state of winter. :) Doesn't that make you happy?? It makes me happy! It makes me hopeful and joyful and free. 

John 15

The Vine and the Branches

 ¹ “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. ² He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. ³ You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. ⁴ Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

   ⁵ “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷ If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

   ⁹ “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command.¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

So, my dear friends who may also be going through a wintertime/may be entering into a time of winter, there is NOTHING wrong with it. And there is so much hope! SO much hope! It's a necessary part of your faith to walk through the blizzard and have your branches trimmed back. Spring is coming, just wait and rest. 

"In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls." ~1 Peter 1:6-9