Life Cycle

Maybe I am just simple, but every year it never ceases to amaze me how all those trees go through the cycle of dropping their leaves in autumn (well in the middle of the City it is probably more like winter!), letting the sun shine through for us in the cold weather, then growing all that new foliage in spring with all those big green leaves to make shade for us in the summer. And we don’t have to do a thing to help! Spring is such a lovely time of the year – first the yellow daffodils, then the coloured flowers and then the bright azaleas make their appearance. And they seem to pop up everywhere. It is also amazing how persistent the little plants are – not just the flowers but the weeds too – the way they push their way up even between the cracks in the middle of the road if the gap has not been fully sealed, and other places where they may not necessarily be welcome.

To me it is hard to understand how little seeds, which are so small, have within them the ability to grow into their own kind of plant. When I look at a plot of ground I find it hard to know how I would even start to make something yellow, red or green out of that! It is just dirt – but somehow the little seeds extract what they need, interact with their environment, and produce a hue of colour with different shapes and sizes out of the dirt. We do take a lot for granted, don’t we! I guess if I were a Botanist I might be able to begin to explain some theory of the mechanism that makes all this happen, but whatever the theory, it should not be allowed to detract from the beauty of the process.

Many poets and writers have made analogies between the annual life cycle of nature and our lives, and the more we consider this the more detailed the analogy can become. But one message that comes through is hope for the future. Just as nature repeats the annual growth cycle, so as we go through life we experience opportunities and set-backs which form the cycles of our lives. Sometimes things seem good, but sometimes we need to be reminded that the good times are on the way.

As Christians we thank God for the gift of life He has given us, and seek to Him to nurture our lives so that we can experience the good things they have to offer. We believe, however, that to receive this virtue within ourselves we must recognise that He exists, and that He sent His Son Jesus Christ into the World to show a way of life for us to follow; to reconcile the World to Himself. Many Christians share the hope that Jesus Christ will return to this Earth and transform everything into a constant eternity of life. The cycle of ups and downs will be replaced by an eternity of everlasting life. These things may be hard to believe and impossible to understand, but to those who accept them they hold out a hope for the future.