We all like to feel that we’re achieving things, moving ahead, contributing to the collective good. This takes actual effort, focus, time and energy. You have to kind of know what you’re trying to accomplish too. We want to bear fruit. And, in fact, that is our design and mandate as a Christian. Be fruitful, be in a fruitful season.
Lately I’ve been feeling out of season. And out of sync. Okay, I’m not even sure what season it is at times as I look around me. As our nation shifts from 45 to 46 there are massive goals for the first — not 100, but 10 days — no time to waste. Focus on achievement, fruitfulness.
On a walk the other day I saw buds on a snowy bush. Middle of January. It’s winter. Buds are supposed to be resting and readying. Not blooming yet. But there they are, ambitious. Okay.
What I’m learning is I can no longer compare my season with yours. Or maybe my fruitfulness, my ambition, my work, just looks different right now. The growth I’m being asked to feed is in the roots and in the interval invisible work of my heart. Maybe it’s engaging with grief that’s been ignored too long. Or engaging with a call to lament.
Maybe the stillness of this fruitless winter season is just the gift I need to take a long look at the health of my own roots—family lines and patterns of thinking, bias, fear, trauma. Sometimes God wants to go back and do the foundation work again.
Will we say yes? So we can bear better fruit later?
[Side note: I believe this type of work is for our nation too; we gotta start with ourselves.]
JOURNAL ENTRY: What season are you in? What’s the work of growth look like? Is it a time to stop and allow room for processing grief, engaging with lament, taking a long look at generational patterns or traumas? These are big questions. Journal about it and see what comes.