Reason to Hope
Happy Spring everyone! We made it through another winter, and warmer weather is on the horizon. This is one of my favorite times of year—the birds are singing, the sun is out, and everywhere you look, there are signs of new life. One day there’s nothing, and it seems like overnight, flowers and trees are blooming everywhere. But it’s not really that simple, is it? Those plants, so beautifully blooming now, have endured the winter. Their seeds buried in the dirt, waiting in the dark, and surviving the cold. The trees, barren and leafless, stalwartly standing as the winter winds rattle their branches. It’s not by luck or happenstance that they survive.
Dormancy, a pause in growth, protects them from developing at the wrong time when adverse conditions would surely kill them off. They are designed to withstand and, in many cases, require these adverse conditions in order to thrive. The leaves on the trees don’t just fall as a result of weakness or inability to withstand the wind. The trees pull the nutrients from their leaves, storing them away for winter, and a new layer of cells grows between the leaf stem and the branch, purposefully cutting the leaves off and causing them to fall. In other instances, many seeds and bulbs—apples and daffodils, for example—have low-temperature thresholds that must be met for them to grow; otherwise, they either never develop or do so abnormally. What we would naturally think is a hindrance to growth and development is in reality protection and preparation.
Think about the relative obscurity of Jesus in his early years. We’re given no information from the time He was 12 and left behind in Jerusalem following the Passover festival until He was baptized, tempted in the wilderness, and began His public ministry around age 30. It would be easy to think that because we’re given no information on this period that it lacked importance—it ‘wasn’t worth mentioning’—but even though we’re not privy to what occurred during this time in Jesus’ life, it is safe to conclude that He was in a season of preparation.
Once we pick His story back up, we witness amazing miracles and teachings that turned the world on its head. We also witness Jesus enduring adversity, ridicule, and hostility throughout His earthly ministry, culminating ultimately in the sacrifice He would make on our behalf. Buried and in the grave for three days, one would think there’s no hope left but thank God for resurrection and new life.
Maybe you’ve found yourself in a dormant season or are actively experiencing adversity. You try to stay positive, stay consistent, and keep ‘fighting the good fight,’ but sometimes, in all honesty, the burden feels a lot more heavy than light. While I’ve felt that way recently, too, I’ve found encouragement in knowing that, just as God has placed within the seed everything it needs to survive, God has equipped us to withstand hard seasons. The patterns we observe in nature and in the life of Jesus are equally applicable to us, and there is purpose to be found in seasons of obscurity and adversity. What might appear as a lack of anything important going on could actually be protecting and preparing you for what is to come, and if you feel like your outlook is bleak now, buried and in the dark, remember that we have the same Spirit within us that raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 8:11).
As new life springs up around us and we approach Easter, my prayer is that we’ll remember we have reason to hope. Because of Jesus, we can “hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise” (Hebrews 10:23). God will sustain you and bring about the right environmental conditions to cause you to bloom again. Not only will you survive, but the strength you develop through adversity will cause you to thrive. Remember that “when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (James 1:2-4).