Sunday Devotional – Nature’s Resiliency

In ecology, resilience is defined as the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly.

Here in Kentucky this year, we had a beautiful early spring in March. The grass turned green. The flowers bloomed. The trees pushed out their leaves. Fruit trees bloomed, including the wild pawpaw trees over in the field that I see on my walks with my dogs.

We were sailing along toward a perfect spring with everything blooming and unfurling right on schedule. But then Old Man Winter pulled a trick on us and  blew back into town. Not for a simple quick frost. Oh no. Winter was determined to spoil our spring. We had worse than a frost. We had a freeze. A hard freeze. Water in the birdbath frozen freeze. Winter coats back out of the closet freeze. Turn the heat back on freeze. Stayed cold all day. Stayed very cold at night. Very cold. Down to 25 degrees.

That’s not bad in January or February. I’m sure some of you northerners are wondering why we would even think of complaining about 25 degrees in early April. But a freeze after trees and plants think it’s spring can be disastrous. The poplar trees in my yard and in the fields looked as though someone had poured boiling water on them. The leaves that were fully out wilted, turned brown then black and fell off. The trees were winter bare again. Some other trees were stripped of their leaves by the freeze too while most shook off the chill and weren’t bothered. The pawpaw trees had just bloomed right before the freeze hit. They wilted black and it appeared a bad year was on the way for pawpaws and any other fruit trees or plants blooming at the time. While I have to admit to not being too concerned about the pawpaws since pawpaws aren’t on my favorite fruit list, I was concerned about the blackened wild raspberry blooms since raspberries are on my favorite fruit list.

Fast forward a few weeks. The raspberries kept blooming and now have green nubs of berries on them. The poplar trees slowly pushed out new leaves and while they aren’t as thickly leaved as they were, they are working on it.  You would never know a tree had an extra set of leaves in reserve if needed, but the Lord made nature to be resilient. There are years when the freezes and late frosts do impact the berries and fruit, but at least the raspberries made it through and since people are picking strawberries in the area, they must have too. Or perhaps the owners of the strawberry fields were the resilient ones with canvases to cover up their plants.

And then when I was walking by the pawpaw tree this week, I noticed some new blooms popping out on the tree. Just perhaps there will be pawpaws after all. At least a few. We can be glad that nature is resilient and has the ability to bounce back from various upsets. Many have claimed that the halting of the economy because of the COVID 19 virus has resulted in less pollution in our air. Nature bouncing back while we humans are in pause mode.  So perhaps we can take a lesson from this. The Lord has made us resilient too. He’s given us the capacity to find ways to deal with these unsettling times and eventually bounce back as we learn what we need to do to overcome the problems before us. Like the pawpaw and the poplar trees, we can be knocked for a loop by the unexpected, but with the Lord’s help, we can pick ourselves up and start anew.

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, who seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ~Genesis 1:11-12 (NKJ)

I just realized I got a little ahead of myself on this 1st Sunday Devotional since tomorrow is the first day of June. So it is a last Sunday devotional instead. I think I should take a better look at the calendar next time, but I hope you’ll enjoy the post anyway.