Spring Practice

It’s Spring!….at least around here, it is.

Around here ‘Spring’ means Spring Practice for the Clemson football team. Coaches intentionally set up situation plays that will challenge the player’s beliefs…their expectations…and draw out their weaknesses.  The players themselves will try moves that have worked before but don’t anymore….and be open to learning a new thing. That’s what spring is all about.

It is Springtime for all of mankind.

God’s gifts are often described in springtime terms of lush green meadows, gentle grazing sheep, still waters, and sweet lilies of the field. The bright bird song sounds like gratitude to God. But Spring, particularly now, is a time to be alert and conscious of what life is about. Those bird songs are battle cries…fierce warnings to protect and defend. Birth of the young is fraught with dangers; one animal’s young devouring another animal’s young. Spring rains can wash out a lifetime of work. Green shoots are amazingly strong and can move rocks, pull down trees, and tumble earth. Those pretty flowers are the plant’s one shot at continuity; fail to compete for the attention of the insect and you lose…No fruit; no future.

Survival is of the alert.

Spring reminds us that there is always change going on, growth, and adaptation. Walls heave and crumble from frost. Dams and levees break and wash away. Those who make it through these changes are not so much ‘survivors’ as they are the riders at the crest of the waves of change.

Isaiah said, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

Bernadette Roberts said:
“The way it goes is that God takes something from us and then waits for our reaction.  Usually He takes something we never even knew we had to give and this is because God works at the unconscious level, while we can only work at the conscious level or with what we know about ourselves. So God’s work is really undercover, for which reason we need absolute faith and trust in what we do not know or cannot see – ourselves or God.

God is Creator:  a parent who takes the responsibility of growing us up…and He does this with fierce love, honesty, and tender grace.

Spring practice lasts only so long and it appears it is getting shorter. It is time we took it upon ourselves to grow ourselves up, be the alert scouts for the best future, be the leaders among our peers, and take the love we know out into the world.

Springtime is about waking up and growing up.

#AllIn,

#AllLove,

and to God be the Glory.

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