One of the best parts of living in the south is that winters are shorter, and an abundance of green plants offer a cheerful respite to the gray days. In much of this country, winter brings leafless trees and a dulling down of the landscapes. I believe that the Lord sprinkled evergreen plants throughout the world so that we would have the pleasure of enjoying them in the winter.
Along my pathway, several holly bushes seem to appear out of nowhere during the winter. The privet stands out with its dark blue berries and the nandina or heavenly bamboo with its bright red berries. And more startling is the honeysuckle that starts putting out new leaves with any break in the cold weather. Often when I am walking in the winter, I catch a bright color out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes it’s the colorful orange lichens that grow on a dead tree. Other times it’s the nandina or holly. It’s hard to know if these are escapes from someone’s garden brought to my woodland path by birds who consumed their berries or if they are native plants. There are so few of them; it makes me think that the birds are the promoters of my winter joy.
While I was in Scotland, the most impressive landscapes were the vast stretches of fir trees that march up the steep sides of the mountains. In some cases, they also spill over the mountainside down to the shore of the loch below. Indeed, when clad with these evergreens, the bleak rock faces appear velvet-clad. The dark fir trees provide a beautiful respite from the stark rock faces and cloudy sky in the winter. Quite frankly, there are few forest pictures I love more than seeing a swath of evergreens blanketed with snow against a high Scottish mountain.
By now, you’re probably wondering where I am going with all of this. What struck me as I contemplated these green mini-vacation spots on my walk was the word evergreen and the generosity of the Lord to provide such a rich contrast to the bleak winter landscapes we endure during our cold months of the year. Maybe it’s why the use of evergreens became so popular during the Christmas holidays?
But what occurred to me is what the word evergreen implies. It reminds me of the word eternal. We don’t often use this word unless we talk about the Trinity, angels, or life after death. But eternal is a word that needs to be part of our everyday vocabulary. It’s all over the Bible. It is not something “out there” to be experienced later. The eternal God lives within eternity. The scripture says: “From eternity to eternity I am God.”* The Lord sees our unformed substance before we are born. But our ability to understand eternity starts when we are born.
This very day you are living in eternity. It says in scripture that we have it set in our hearts. “ 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.”** That means that the Triune God, who is Himself eternal, and who created the universe, also fashioned you to live forever. Ponder that for a few moments. It will put some perspective on your day’s events.
The Lord has set aside within eternity, heaven, a place where His presence resides, and hell, the place without Him. When you give your life to Christ, you take your first step into heaven’s eternity. This happens with your soul, spirit, and body, in some unfathomable way. Without this spiritual transformation, eternity is a place where God cannot be found.
If you read this blog regularly, you know I am fascinated with rivers and waterfalls. I suspect it is because they seem eternal to me. Standing by these water courses, there is a seemingly endless supply of water pouring over those rock faces. It is not just the majesty, but the continuous flow of water over rock cliffs down into valleys making ribbons of light in our landscapes. They are a reflection of His Living water. “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”***
So the next time you see a forest of fir trees or a waterfall, contemplate what the Lord is saying to you about your life here on earth and in the eternal realm and rejoice that He has a plan for all of it. Think about the things which are unseen that surround you as well as what He has laid out for your to enjoy.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
2 Corinthians 4:18 NIV
*Isaiah 43:13 NASB
**Ecc: 3:11 NIV (Italics mine)
***John 4:14 NIV
