When We Come Alive

The hills in southern California have sprung up in vibrant greens recently – wildflowers of orange, yellow, and purple carpet the green hills, making a tapestry of color and life that I haven’t seen around here in many years. 

These colors were highlighted recently on a bike ride I took at sunrise, where the sun’s long shadows cast a contrast on the hills, making them stand out all the more glorious, all the more beautiful than they already were. 

The colors on these hills are a direct result of the rainfall we’ve received this season.

Mind you – we haven’t had torrents, we haven’t had flooding, there was no reenactment of Noah’s ark going on. Just normal, seasonal rain. 

Or, thanks to our recent string of arid winters, perhaps a better way to describe it would be abnormal, seasonal rain.

This rain provided nourishment for the hills; clearly they were thirsty for this water, and in an act of celebration, burst forth with life and with color, drawing the springtime birds ever closer with their verdant life.

Doesn’t this sound a little bit like us?

Have you ever felt dry inside, like your life has been stuck in a drought? The dryness makes you feel brittle, like you might snap at the slightest pressure, breaking in half and leaving nothing but remnants of twigs behind? 

When the hills aren’t receiving nourishment, they dry up and go bare. After they go bare, they not only stop giving live, but they actually become tinder for destruction. (In fact, many of the local cynics will point out that these very same verdant hills will turn to ash and fire come the fall.)

Do you feel dry?

It’s worth asking when you’ve last received nourishment.

For me, nourishment comes in many forms:

Reading my Bible.

Coffee at sunrise.  

Bike rides with my son. 

Wrestling with my older boys.

A kind word from a friend.

Date night with my wife.

Walking through nature.

Listening for the whispers of God. 

Laughter.

We receive nourishment when others give it, whether it be given by nature, by God, by friends and family, or all of the above. 

Here’ my challenge: Take some time this week to find some nourishment. Not the temporary kind found in television or other forms of numbness, but the real, more lasting kind.

Allow that nourishment to fill you, watering the dry places inside.

As you “green up”, take that nourishment to offer to others. Give them a kind word, or invite them out for coffee, or mail that card you’ve been meaning to send for weeks.

Take steps.

Because the thing about the SoCal hills is that summer is coming. And in summer, they dry up for lack of water.

If summer provided even a small dose of rain on a semi-regular basis, these hills would never go dry. They would stay green and vibrant. And beautiful. 

And they would be more resistant to fire, to calamity – stronger in the fight against destruction.

To combat our dryness, may we all take steps to nourish one another, offering gifts of life and encouragement, keeping each other’s inner hills green. 

For life gives more life.

And when it does, it sure is beautiful.