Dormancy
My beautiful cyclamen plant has been providing my house with vibrant red flowers for the past few months. I have been faithfully watering the dish when it gets dry and removing the dead blooms. I was getting proud of my once brown thumb now turning green. But the past couple of days there have been more dead blooms than live ones and the lush, green leaves are turning yellow. Dismayed, I thought, “Are my brown thumbs showing their true colours?”
True to form, I turned to Google for some answers. The search for “cyclamen turning yellow” yielded an interesting result. The Cyclamen Society (who knew??) told me ‘your plant is going dormant for summer and you should stop watering until September’. Two things became apparent: 1) the Cyclamen Society is in the northern hemisphere and 2) I may yet have a green thumb after all!
As I thought about dormancy these verses came to mind.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;Eccl 3: 1-2
But it doesn’t end there. There are more seasons in life, so called ‘good’ and ‘bad’:
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.Eccl 3:1-9
When I was in my late teens, life stretched out before me. I was told, dream big! Make life goals! You can choose your destiny. You can be anything you want to be if you want it enough.
But then despite best intentions, good choices, lots of thought and planning, sometimes life does not go as we planned. Perhaps because we do not realise or recognise God and His sovereignty. He knows us and our world better than we do. God is working to His rhythm and schedule, not ours, something we cannot fully understand.
He has made everything beautiful in its time.
He has also set eternity in the human heart;
yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Eccl 3:11
Dormancy for plants is a means of survival through harsh conditions. The plant carefully uses the energy it has stored in the previous season. Then when the conditions begin to improve, it gradually wakes up and rejuvenates.
God is still there with us in our tough, critical seasons – helping us to survive. We may feel we are not moving forward, gaining ground, meeting targets. It causes us to question: do we do the right thing because it is good or because of the result? We might feel that unfulfilled longing in our heart. He waits with us during these seasons and is there to rejuvenate us as the new season comes.
