Now it Springs Forth...

fig branch, budding

“Behold! I am about to do 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.” (Isaiah 43

I have a fig tree in my front yard, and for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been watching the bare branches, checking every day for the first signs of life. This morning when I left my house, still nothing. But this evening as I trudged home from work, I glanced over to see each spindly finger tipped with green. As I felt my breath rise in my chest, something broke within me, a river coursing through parched paths singing, “What fresh glory! What deep, holy wonder!”

This miracle got me thinking about new life and how we come to perceive it in the world. By the time the daffodils poke their heads above the soil and the buds form on the trees, it’s obvious. Spring has arrived (at least seasonally, if not officially on the calendar). But what about the months and weeks and even days before, when the bulbs are sending down the roots and unfurling from their casings? The plants are growing, preparing, and even changing on a cellular level, but most of us can’t tell the difference. There is life coursing through those xylem and phloem, but when I look out my window I can’t see it.

As the prophet Isaiah speaks to the people of God in exile – a people who have been watching and waiting and wondering  “how long, O Lord?” – he speaks of God’s love, protection, and care. And in the midst of the promises he proposes this question: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?”  I suspect the answer to that question was “no” or at least “not yet.” If they could see this new thing, they wouldn’t need a prophet to point the way. But God is faithful in this way too, with poets and prophets, preachers and teachers, babies and blossoms ready to help us look beyond the barren framework of this life and into something more, just beyond our ability to see it.

I’m also aware that I’m musing on new life as my grandmother nears death. She’s always been someone with an artist’s vision, able to see beauty and potential, holy happenings in the most unlikely places. For most of her 97 years she’s been a paragon of prayer, speaking in words only she and God could understand. But now her language is only breath. Soon, that too will end. I wonder what is becoming inside of her? What new life is pulsing within her spiritual veins? Will her last breath here herald a budding in her eternal home? We can’t see it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening – and what a river she will be! Her prayer and praise rarely ceased in this life, and it will flow without bounds in the next, where she knows fully and is fully known. What we see as an end may in fact be a bursting through, a springing forth, into God’s glory.

So, as those left to peer through the mirror dimly, may our hearts always be full of awe and wonder. Let us approach the world with an attitude of curiosity and a deep sense of hope. Because God is always doing a new thing.
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Update: My grandmother died on the very day I wrote this piece, perhaps even the very minute the fig tree budded. May heaven be filled with her song, and the earth with her sweet fruit.

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