It is springtime in the Southern Rocky Mountains. The cherry orchard is in full bloom and if you look close at my photographs from this morning you can see the little cherries forming behind the blossoms. I water and wait, wondering if we can avoid the late freeze, as if there is something I could do to prevent that. I admit I have walked around the orchard the last few days...praying for the weather to hold. I feel on a small scale what the farmer must feel as he waits patiently on something completely beyond his control. A spring rain to water his planting. For the dry land farmer, many of whom I know, their prayers are many and sincere, these are the most faith-filled people I have ever met, and I know why. I am reminded from the cherry trees how dependent we are.
If you could hear what I hear as I walk through our little cherry orchard, I am certain you would be amazed as I am. The sound of the bees working is constant, the buzz is louder than you might imagine. I stand beneath a large cherry tree and watch. Thousands maybe tens of thousands of bees are at work pollinating the blossoms. They are making honey somewhere. I know of a neighbor a mile away that keeps bee boxes. I wonder if they are traveling from here to there, or if there is some hidden hive in the forest that surrounds us. If I could follow, I would love to find that secret place where the bees live. This also reminds me of the perfectly designed creation in which we live. The bees take dust from the trees and turn it into honey. None of us could ever replicate this feat. Without the bees there would be no cherries.
I am amazed.
Inside the warm little green house, the plants are sprouting. I do not know how. I know if you take a seed and bury it in the soil add sunlight and water, the seed will germinate. But from a tiny seed that is dull and brown, and in the case of the carrot, fairly hard to handle or plant in the little pots, from that tiny seed comes something extraordinary. Right now, they look like little weeds. Soon the tops will jump up and grow two feet tall or more. While under the soil the bright orange fruit develops. They will swell over the summer into foot long roots. Sweet, delicious and one of the most nutritious pure foods. The harvest will last well into the late fall and early winter. The final product looks nothing like what was planted.
The little plants remind me of…us.
We are also being transformed. We are blossoming being fed and watered, pruned and tended by the Master Gardener. The process takes time, we are handled gently so as not to damage our tenderness. Slowly what is revealed is more and more of what we were created to look like and be like. We are something completely different than what was planted. We have the ability to produce “One-Hundred fold more than what was planted”.
The new growth, these new beginnings, the changing of the seasons, the uniqueness of it all also reminds me that the virus will soon be gone. It is here only for a season. How we tend to one another is what is most important. Let us do so gently...
Steve
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