Sometimes God just jumps out on your daily path of busyness and whispers ‘Look at me’.
It happened like this for me the other day.
I was working on a farm trying to solve some water reticulation problems. As I was walking to the water pump I happened to look down to the path and I noticed this punga stump with new growth coming out of the top.
In New Zealand we call this unfurling fern symbol the Maori word ‘Koru.’
The koru (Māori for ‘loop or coil’) is a spiral shape based on the appearance of a new unfurling silver fern frond.
It is an integral symbol in Māori art, carving and tattooing, where it symbolises new life, growth, strength and peace.
Its shape “conveys the idea of perpetual movement,” while the inner coil “suggests returning to the point of origin”. Wikipedia
I have long held a deep connection with what God does in nature and what he calls us to do with each other.
The Holy Spirit spoke to me a number of insights from this meeting on the path.
- Many people have been cut down, discarded, and overlooked. Seeing nothing of the beauty contained within, the person is considered a commodity to be used and then rubbished.
- Inner resilience. Some form of strength lies within all of us. Many times this resilience needs to be encouraged and nurtured by others to break out into
- Purpose. There is a purpose for every aspect of God’s creation, including you. Just because its a fern it still has a purpose. You have purpose and meaning.
- Deep change requires a slowness, imperceptible to most. The change we so want to see generally doesn’t happen quickly. It is often small and incremental, building slowly.
- Change can look ugly if that is all you look for. Look closer with an open heart and you will see beauty. That fern, that moss, it may look ugly, but look closer and in it you will see something of Gods creative presence.
This is what my calling is all about. Helping my readers connect with the God of new growth out of old destruction.
For here’s what I’m going to do:
I’m going to take you out of these countries, gather you from all over, and bring you back to your own land.
I’ll pour pure water over you and scrub you clean.
I’ll give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you.
I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed.
I’ll put my Spirit in you and make it possible for you to do what I tell you and live by my commands. Ezekial 36: 24- 28
‘here’s what I’m going to do’.
God is doing something.
So often we strive, we push, worry, and stress out, while all the time God is doing something often unseen by us. Something unfurling, being released, a newness that comes into the world.
Barry Pearman
