The Fullness of Time

“Spring has sprung,” as someone said, and there seems to be no holding back trees, vines, bushes and flowers as they surge with life during these early days of April 2010.

Not long ago, dogwoods, pines and sweet gums that grow in our yard in Southern Pines, N.C., stood tall and dark as powdery snow rested on their cold, gray limbs. At that time, those trees appeared deaf to any awakening call from nature. But deep inside those sedated powerful pines and hardwoods lay the potential I now see bursting forth.

As I recently drove home from work, I noticed pale-purple Wisteria blooms hanging from pines and thought of my late parents. They years ago planted a Wisteria vine at the edge of their yard in Greer, S.C. Wisteria climbs and entwines and spreads almost like kudzu, I think, and my folk’s Wisteria was hard to control. My father kept the vine from finding a tree to twine around, but that stubborn plant tried to branch out horizontally. Dad had to prune his Wisteria pretty often. I read that the world’s largest known Wisteria vine is located in Sierra Madre, California, and measures more than one acre in size and weighs 250 tons.

Wisteria is largely native to the eastern U.S. and to China, Korea and Japan. I think Wisteria appears “oriental” in the way it droops from trees, and I also associate it with old Southern plantations and white-haired, elderly, lilacs-and-lace kinds of ladies wearing dresses made of fabric dyed to match the color of Wisteria blooms.

I opened our front door the other morning at 6:30 a.m. and heard what sounded like hundreds of birds chirping and chattering. I envisioned them as feathered singers warming up for a concert that would begin at sunrise. Life seemed to pulsate from the woods surrounding our home.

I recently walked to our mailbox and saw that Carol or I had unknowingly squashed an 8-inch corn snake with one of our cars’ tires as Mr. Snake tried crossing our driveway. “Corn snakes” are non-venomous, have maize-like patterns on their bellies and are often found in cornfields.

I hope to soon see a whitetail doe with a spotted fawn grazing in our yard. I often see deer out back of our home. Whitetails tend to breed in the fall when fewer hours of daylight cause hormonal changes responsible for their breeding behavior. Therefore, the majority of fawns are born in the spring “when weather and vegetative conditions are most favorable for their survival,” according to “Whitetail Institute.”

A friend told me that if all people were taken from the world, in 50 years you wouldn’t know man had been on earth. He said nature would reclaim all land cultivated and altered by men. I don’t know about that, but nature is a powerful force, and no one can hold it back. Springtime reminds us of that.

God created the earth’s seasons:

“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years’” (Genesis 1:14).

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22).

The Apostle Paul said we sense God through his handiwork. Paul wrote, “For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:20, NIV).

Observing the arrival of spring this year, I feel overwhelmed by God’s creation. How pitiful I would appear, if I commanded a huge oak to cease growing. I can’t hold back its leaves or the sap rising within it. If man can’t hold back the plant and animal life that bursts forth in springtime, neither will man hold back God’s plan as it unfolds in “due season” and in “the fullness of time.”

God created times and seasons, and he understands “the fullness of time.”

“But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

“Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him” (Ephesians 1:9-10).