Do you remember playing with maple tree seeds when you were a kid? Do you remember tossing them as high as possible to watch them twirl like helicopters as they fell back to earth? Windy days were the best because you could throw handfuls into the air and see them twirl off toward the neighbor’s yard. Ah, the simple pleasures! And those seeds so playfully thrown into the air? Come spring as the sun melted the snow each little helicopter sprouted driving a tiny taproot into the neighbor’s grass raising itself upright to the sun. The mind is a wonderful thing. Even as we can remember playing with maple tree seeds, we can also imagine a grove of maple trees that might have grown from all those seeds. We can imagine each tree standing proud and tall with buckets full of sap hanging onto their trunks. Alas, because of a lawnmower that grove was never to be.
Nevertheless, somewhere there was such a field of seeds and a mower did not come. The seeds grew. God’s wonderful earth never stops providing for the future. As old maples snap and tumble in the winter storms, spring brings the young. “God did good. He gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” Acts 14:17
Written by Roger Bothwell on April 3, 2003
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 84574
Rogerbothwell.org