Turn, Turn, Turn

To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under Heaven. Ecclesiastes 3:1

My puppy and I have been taking long walks in a nearby state park for the last several months. When we first started walking there, it was a serene and tranquil place but, honestly, it wasn't very pretty. I mean, it was nice enough, I suppose, but it definitely left something to be desired. The trees were bare and everything was brown and gray and stark and boring. I longed for springtime, for the full experience of the bright, beautiful forest in bloom, but it was mid-March, and it just wasn't the right time yet. It wasn't the right season.

By the beginning of April, I admit, I began to get impatient. I was ready for spring! But still, everything was brown and still, and we plodded along the dirt path every day without the sight of a single leaf. Everything felt stifled and sometimes I wondered if spring would ever come.

Then one day, right around Easter, it seemed to happen all at once - leaves burst out on the branches, decorating the forest in a thousand shades of green. Flowers popped up and opened, basking in the sun. Butterflies flitted around, dancing in front of my nose. The forest came alive, and that resurgence of life culminated in a beautiful display of vitality that seemed to draw us in as we walked. The season had changed.

It might have seemed to me like it happened overnight, but it didn't really. For weeks, buds had been forming and the ground had been warming and the forest had been preparing itself. It took baby steps, steps I couldn't see, but that were absolutely necessary in order for the brilliance that I now witness every day. If I'd been impatient - if I had decided during the first week in April that I was tired of waiting and that was it - and I had stopped walking my puppy in the park, I'd have missed it all.

Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Revelation 21:5

God didn't rip up all the trees and plant new ones. He didn't make me find somewhere else to walk. He didn't tell me to just stay home because the forest was always going to be dead and I should give up. Nope. I just had to be patient and trust Him, trust that He knew what He was doing - and, even more so, that He was doing it - and that I could believe what He said.

This is what the LORD says: "I will restore the fortunes of Jacob's tents and have compassion on his dwellings; the city will be rebuilt on her ruins, and the palace will stand in its proper place." Jeremiah 30:18

Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. Psalm 71:20

That's what God does - He restores. He renews. He changes seasons. He brings things back to life. He is a God of second chances, of healing, of newness...of springtime.

Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you. Zechariah 9:12

Believe Him. Let Him do it His way - the right way - and trust that He is doing it, even now.

The butterflies will be worth it.