Growth: A Basic Necessity
Ah, March! This is the month that spring is supposed to occur! (It’s Friday, March 20th, at 7:44 AM, EDT, if you’re interested.) Our deep freeze weather seems to have broken. The weather has climbed into the 50°’s and 60°’s this past week; can spring be too far behind?
Perhaps one of the first living things that will make their appearance (besides the return of our song birds) will be the small, colorful crocus. Soon thereafter, our lawns, flowerbeds and trees will all be a-bloom! Ah, life! What a positive statement from God! How good it makes us feel!
We can learn a lot from plants. A plant grows and lives, because it is in relationship with its environment: soil, water, sunlight, temperature. Deny any one of these elements, and the plant will not thrive, and it will probably die.
A plant grows and lives because of the life force within it. Whether in the seed, bulb, roots, stalks or trunks, there is a great struggle to survive. Life is an organized system of inanimate elements. The physics at work in our world tend to disassemble and destroy organized things. To counteract these forces, the plant must always be in a growing mode, to replace parts that “wear out.”
The plant draws on its environment, to re-supply its storehouse of materials so it can replace the worn-out parts. Our bodies do the same thing. That is one of the main reasons that we eat, to create the storehouse to enable our bodies to replace its worn-out parts.
It is no different with spiritual life. Satan is out there, to tear apart the unity we have with God. Satan has many lurid, glitzy, attractive offers, to encourage us to break away from God and to “do our own thing.” He constantly tries to “wear us down” in our commitment to God.
The only way to counter these spiritual assaults is to stay connected with God’s spiritual plan and order. God gave us His Son, to cleanse us from our sins (I Pet. 2:24), and to provide the spiritual teachings that we will need to counteract Satan (Jn. 6:63). We must maintain our spiritual relationship to Jesus, to stay “fresh,” to keep growing in God’s grace (Jn. 15:1 – 8)(II Pet. 1:5 – 11).
Like the plants, & like our physical bodies, we either grow or we die! Christian, make the effort to spiritually feed yourself!
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