April
3
I will give you rain in
its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall
yield their fruit (Leviticus 26:4).
You do not get the fruit
until the blossom has gone. It is the Summer, not the Winter, that follows the
blowing away of the blossom. Of course, we all like to see the blossom in its
time, but we should have some strange feelings if we saw the blossom there all
through the Summer. We should say: "There is something wrong here, it is
time that blossom went." We look closer, and we see something in its
place, full of promise, and of much more value. This early blossom may be a
sign of life, but it is not the life itself. A sign of early life belongs to
the early Spring, showing that the Winter is past and resurrection is at work.
It is a sign, but it is not the thing itself, and it passes with spiritual
infancy. These early enthusiasms are not the real basis of our union with God,
but are signs of something that has happened in us. They are of ourselves, they
are not of God. He is something other than that. He is not going to blow away.
The Life is working and will show itself in stronger and deeper forms....
But if, on the one hand,
eternal Life operates to cut us off from our natural life as the basis of our
relationship with God, on the other hand, it is perfectly wonderful what is
done. It is "the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes." The
Lord even comes in as our physical life to the doing of more than would have
been possible to us at our best, and certainly far beyond the present
possibility, because He has made us know that as men we are nothing, even at
our best. Life does that. Life forces off one system and brings on another,
making room for it as it goes.
By T. Austin-Sparks from: All Things in
Christ - Chapter 9
This photograph is by Liz Burnell.
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