RISING TO NEW LIFE
We are now well into the Fall season of our year here In Southern Indiana. This means changes are beginning to appear in the great outdoors. We are blessed in this area with the beauty and the variety of God’s creation.
The four seasons bring changes not experienced in other areas of our country and most of the rest of the world. We are not limited to constant sunshine and oppressive heat, or months of mounds of snow, ice and extreme cold.
So the signs of Fall, or Autumn, begin to appear. Leaves fall from a wide variety of trees and cover the ground. Squirrels scurry to store away food for the winter.
Walnuts fall from the mature walnut trees. Acorns are shed from the stately oaks. Hickory nuts drop from the tough hickory trees. These all produce nuts to provide, not only for the squirrels, but for humans as well.
We might be tempted to look upon this death of seasonal beauty which surrounds us during the spring and summer months as permanent. But we have the promise that all that beauty will return in the spring and flourish again throughout the summer.
I am reminded of Jesus’ words in John 12:24 where He taught the Apostles, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
So, as we reluctantly view the departure of the warmth and beauty of summer, we must remember that God has designed His world for His people to enjoy, not just for one season, but daily, and for all the years of our lives. But, just as our earthly lives are limited, so are the elements of nature.
Jesus taught, in order for leaves to reappear in the spring of each year, they must fall at the end of the summer season. If the squirrels are to survive the winter, the fruit of the nut trees must fall to the ground. The beauty of the flower does not appear only once, but the seeds fall to the ground, die, and produce multiple sees ready to sprout and bloom again.
These changes must take place so that plant and animal life becomes perpetual. Jesus promised His followers a perpetual life as well. That life, which we know as eternity, is only possible because the Son of God, Jesus Christ, died and was buried. Just as these natural seasonal changes occur, with expected renewed life in the spring, we can stand on the promise that Jesus Christ has not remained dead and buried, but He has risen from the grave, and is alive today. He is about the business of preparing a place and a time for His faithful to be resurrected and to rise to a renewed and eternal life with Him.
There will be no changing seasons, no bitter cold or oppressive heat. We will experience, instead, unending life in the perfectness of Heaven where we will continually worship and praise our Lord Jesus Christ In the presence of the Father.
------ Gary K. Fair
This devotional was first published in my Creation Speaks article for Master’s International University of Divinity.
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