2008: The Year of the....

There’s an intersection on my daily commute where you can turn left and drive on Rose Blvd, or turn right and end up on Birch Street. I have driven past that intersection how many hundreds of times without it ever catching my eye…until today.

It struck me: the rose is beautiful…but its beauty fades after just a week. Its petals whither up and fall off, and you throw it aside without giving it a second thought.

But a birch tree—it takes years to grow into the handsome, white-barked, autumnally red-leafed, deciduous tree. A birch does not typically catch someone’s eye…until October comes around, and its leaves turn red as fire. Once a year, this tree consumes the gaze of the passerbyer.

Which is preferable? The Rose or the Birch Tree? If you faced this intersection in life, which direction would you take? I think I’m glad sometimes God chooses this for us—because left to myself, left I would choose…the quick, easy, popular form of pleasure.

I was reflecting on this past year, amazed at how much has happened. Quit my job, went to Italy for 12 days, started a new job that I love, helped record two different CDs, moved into an incredible house with my own room and living with one of my best friends, entered a dating relationship, went to India for three weeks…and then there was the significant events like the Chino Hills 6.5 earthquake, Obama becoming the new American president, the fires in Brea and Yorba Linda…to name a few. It’s been a full year. Any one of these events would have been enough to make 2008 notable.

It’s so funny to me how just one year prior, 2007, I was wrestling through a job that wasn’t a good fit, a difficult relationship, then my singleness, and ultimately a deep loneliness as my closest friends and family had moved far away from me. One year later, my life is overflowing with blessing, and I often do not know what to make of it. Why me, Lord? I don’t need all this! You’re too good to me. Can that happen? Can you ever have too much goodness in your life? I’m surrounded by dear friends and loved ones who suffer greatly…and yet God blesses me. Why?

When “my man” returned from our church’s men’s retreat this year, he shared what he’d learned from Galatians 6:7--9: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” He said, “We sow in one season, and reap in the next – and in agricultural, you often reap even more than you sowed. It’s just a basic principle of farming.”

How often do we go through life sowing seeds and feeling frustrated that we never see the fruit, without realizing that sometimes you don’t reap the harvest until years down the road…in the next season.

I am trying to decide. Has 2008 been the Year of the Rose or the Year of the Birch for me? Is it just a random, fleeting season of blessing? Or am I somehow seeing some sweet fruit from a darker season in my past? The answer is obvious, I hope.

Every moment counts. Every moment we are either sowing seeds to the flesh, or to the Spirit; sowing seeds of fading earthly treasures, or sowing to eternity. My life may be blessed right now, but I know soon enough it will be time for another season of sowing. Harvest comes but once a year. So I’m grateful and celebrating my harvest of 2008—and hoping I can turn it right around to invest for the next season to come.

If you are in a season of suffering...keep holding out. Your time will come…

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8