Seeds and New Life of Spring

This morning my husband was admiring and showing me the new sprouts from our lettuce seeds that he planted just 4 days ago.  I can't think of a more appropriate way to welcome in the first day of Spring!

Lettuce seeds sprouting from one of last year's gourds.

He saved several of our birdhouse gourds that we grew from last year, and we decided to turn them into planters this year to start several of our seeds.  This is the first year we have decided to start all of our garden plants from heirloom seeds.  We both get so excited when we start dreaming about the future of these seeds.  How many years of crops we can grow.  How one day we will have a collection of seeds to pass on to our children as they begin to grow their own food and hopefully carry on the family legacy of "growing."  A legacy that my mom-and-dad-in-law planted into my husband's heart a long time ago.  A legacy he has shared with me and one that we eagerly await to instill in our children.

To see a seed come to life is unlike anything else I have ever experienced.  To know that a tiny seed, saved from a fruit that would have otherwise died and ceased to exist, has been saved for planting the next spring.  A seed has been saved to bring about resurrection of that fruit, of that crop, so that a new life may sprout.  That tiny seed will grow tall and strong and eventually bear fruit of its own.  Food that we can eat and share.  Food that will produce a seed so that the resurrection of its crop is everlasting.

Seeing this process is a constant reminder of what Spring is really about:  Life and Resurrection.  No matter how harsh and long the winter months were.  No matter how cold and dark the days seemed to be.  Spring is a constant; it will always come.  The flowers will always bloom.  The trees will always bud.  The crops will always bear their harvest.

If there is ever a time to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is now.  Resurrection Sunday is 11 days away.  Let us not wait until then to begin rejoicing that His New Life is available NOW. Today.  Everyday. 

This birdhouse gourd pictured above, which last week was nothing more than a dead, hollow shell, is now being used to resurrect these seeds.  It has been transformed into a vessel of new life!

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  -John 12:24

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death,  so that as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.  -Romans  6:4 

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.  Do you believe this?  -John 11:25-26

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  -1 Peter 1:3