Spring Starts With a Thaw

Some seasons feel like just getting by. Though God provides what we need, we receive His gifts coolly. Like the frozen ground in winter, we see the blessings drifting down as a mere covering until at last the sun comes again. We’re numb with the cold of same old, same old. Habituated to our hurts and resigned to endure, our desires are fixed on days far away.

Then, at last, we see flowers brightly yawn a hello after their long winter’s sleep. Birds stretch their wings to test the gentle warmth of a spring breeze.

Mud isn’t the pretty part of new life and reawakening. It’s often a reminder of the hard and mundane. But there’s a lesson in the sticky, messy stuff about transitioning.

Between the brittle of winter and the softness of spring is the thaw.

Muddy mess is part of the thawing.

We need this in our hearts the way the earth needs it in her skin to welcome spring. Before the flowers bloom and the birds return to make a home and sing praise, the ground has to soften again.

The blanket of snow melts. The warmer rain turns frozen dirt to mud. The softening clay becomes fertile again.

Softening and thawing are vital elements of being made new in Christ.

Receiving is the beautiful, messy in-between of transitioning from what was to what will be. Click To Tweet

As clay in the potter’s hands, we need to receive well what he applies to soften us, even as it makes us mushy. It’s part of how we’re malleable for His shaping work.

As branches abiding in the true vine, we must absorb what He nourishes us with if we’re to be fruitful for Him.

As hearts flowing with living water, we must drink in the water of Christ’s life if we’re to refresh others and be welled up into enteral life ourselves.

These aren’t the picturesque parts of glorifying God and growing in faith. Often, they aren’t visible at all. Becoming malleable means bending to God’s will over our own. Absorbing His nourishment until we are fruitful requires patience and repetition. Drinking in deeply means we’re really thirsty first.

That’s okay.

Be thirsty.

Be habitual.

Be mushy.  

It’s part of spring.

The freshness of new life begins with opening up the old and weary to receive well from the One who is making us in the first place. That makes mud a beautiful thing.

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