WEEK ONE: GOD IS THE RE-CREATOR

I personally do not enjoy winter very much. Don’t get me wrong—I love living in a place where we get to experience all four seasons in full force! But the winter is the toughest season for me to endure. Everything is cold and dead. I can’t go outside and pick a pepper from my garden to use for dinner; I don’t see flowers by my front door when I arrive home each day. Everything feels barren and desolate.

Now, imagine living in a climate where there was no winter—maybe you grew up in a place where it never snowed and there were leaves on the trees all year round. If you moved from there to a place that was particularly brutal in the winter, it might seem as though you would never feel warm again… It might seem like winter was just endless.

But we all know that winter is not permanent.

What looks dead isn’t always really dead.

When spring finally arrives, we suddenly see leaves and grass start to thrive again and the soil gives way to new life! Birds and insects start to re-appear seemingly out of nowhere as the earth comes back to life.

This is such a beautiful and miraculous example of how God not only creates, but re-creates.

In nature, the season of winter is not the end. And the same can be true for our lives.

In the dark and barren places of our souls, God is in the business of renewal and transformation. But we have to be willing to be transformed. Just as I have recently gone back outside to pull out the dead branches leftover from the winter to plant new seeds and herbs for my garden, we can invite and allow God to renew us in the same way. What once was dead is now not only alive again, but it can produce good fruit. When we surrender ourselves completely to God, the power of the Re-Creator can make us brand new.