Embracing the Changing Seasons of Life by Nina Faye Morey

For everything there is a season,

and a time for every purpose under heaven.

~ Ecclesiastes 3:1 (ASV)

Just as nature’s seasons change, so do the seasons of our lives. We may not be willing to accept these changes, but they will happen nevertheless. They are inevitable and come and go quickly. Time passes even faster as I grow older, and the seasons of my life zoom past with head-spinning speed. But would I really want to stop the clock? If my life grew stale and stagnant despite these ever-changing seasons, would I still remain content? As far as I can see, I only have two choices. I can be the passive casualty of change or the passionate embracer of change. I know which one I will choose. How about you?

Change doesn’t have to be viewed as negative. Many changes in my life have definitely been for the better. They’ve opened me up to new adventures, new experiences, new discoveries, new ideas, new passions, new hopes, new dreams, new purposes, new people, and so many other new and positive things. I’ve discovered that I am more satisfied with the seasons of my life if I choose to actively embrace these changes rather than complaining about them, fearing them, resisting them, or outright rejecting them. I must not be afraid to step out of my comfort zone, shake-up my normal routine, and move ahead with my life.

Autumn is a glorious season when the summer leaves change colour from their fine greenery to brilliant shades of yellow, red, and orange. It’s also traditionally a time when one season of life transforms into another. As I harvest and preserve the fruits of past labours, I am also planning what seeds I will plant and nurture through my next season of growth. Embracing these changing seasons of life offers renewed opportunities to envision how to make the best use of my God-given gifts. More specifically, what does God want me to do and what do I want Him to do for me in the next phase of my writing life? I am excited to see what new challenges He has in store for me and how He will help me to meet these challenges. What does He require of me and how will I respond? I have dreamed up so many writing projects for this upcoming season that I hardly know where to begin.

The LORD says, “I will teach you the way you should go;

I will instruct you and advise you.

~ Psalm 32:8 (GNT)

As I prepare for my next season of growth, I feel God challenging me to cultivate fresh fields. One new field in which I plan to plant and nurture seeds is on a site in the realm of the internet. I haven’t settled on a name for my new domain yet, but I’ve been reading several of those how-to books and websites that promise to help me plan, design, and launch my new website into this online world. I don’t know if this new site will prove to be a fertile ground for growth, but I intend to fully embrace this challenge. I believe that if I listen to God’s voice and respond positively to this change He’s asking me to make in my writing life, my efforts will prove to be fruitful.

Remain in me, and I will remain in you.

For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine,

and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

~ John 15:4 (NLT)

Just as the seasonal changes in nature are inevitable, so are the changes that naturally occur as we go through the seasons of life. What new challenges in your life or writing do you feel God has in store for you this season, and how will you respond?

Welcome to My Garden of Words by Nina Faye Morey

Spring is the time of year when everyone gets anxious to get outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Those of us who are gardeners have already been planning what to plant for months. We’ve been studying our seed catalogues throughout those last cold days of winter, choosing the seeds we want to grow. We may even have started germinating some seedlings indoors in preparation for planting. My favourite spring ritual is the annual trip to a local nursery to choose which flowers I want to transplant into my flowerbeds and flowerpots. The warm, moist, fragrant air; the sunshine streaming down; and the glorious rainbow of colours that greets you once you step inside the greenhouse is enough to cure anyone’s winter doldrums and awaken a yearning to create that prize-winning garden.

Writers are the gardeners of words. We spend plenty of time planning what to write. We read, study, and research the Scriptures and various writings, searching for those special seeds that inspire us and so titillate our senses that we want to plant them in our next nonfiction book or novel. We hope that if we do our groundwork properly and sow these seeds under just the right conditions, they will germinate and flourish. So we diligently toil to transplant them into vivid, descriptive words and sentences that will likewise captivate our readers. As a writer, I pray that I will be able to skillfully sow the seeds God has given me in such a way that they will grow and blossom in readers’ hearts, souls, and spirits.

Writing, like gardening, not only demands preparation, but also a lot of perspiration and patience. Beyond selecting what seeds to sow, we need to carefully prepare the plot in which to plant them if we want them to take root, sprout, bloom, and bear fruit. As Jesus explained to His followers in the Parable of the Sower, if seeds are sown into ground that is not properly prepared, they will not germinate and grow (Matthew 3: 4-8). We can’t just scatter our seeds indiscriminately; we first need to sketch an outline of our plot. Then we can plant them seed by seed, working our way methodically line by line, watering and fertilizing them with just the right components, so that the entire composition contains rhyme and reason. As we work section by section, according to our plan, we must make sure that each part contributes to the overall composition. Placing faith in our creativity, we work patiently to ensure these seeds gradually germinate and grow into an intriguing garden of words.

If we want our creation to develop and mature into a true work of art, it will require the sweat of our brow throughout its entire season of growth. And we will need the patience to labour on through several seasons if we want to create a perennial masterpiece. If we tend our creation carefully, it will flourish. If we fail to regularly water, weed, and fertilize, it will become dry, barren, and lifeless. Weeds may resemble pretty flowers at first glance, but they will overgrow and overshadow the beauty of our budding creation if allowed to proliferate. If we make no effort to uproot them, they will sap the strength and smother the life out of our precious creation. Therefore, it’s vital that we keep reseeding and reworking our garden of words over and over again until we’re absolutely convinced that we’ve created a beautiful piece we can be proud of. Then we may even dare to daydream about winning that coveted award or creating a work that will someday become a classic.

Photos: Pixabay Free Images

This Year Spread Out! Think Big! by Nina Faye Morey

“Clear lots of ground for your tents!

Make your tents large. Spread out! Think big!

Use plenty of rope,

drive the tent pegs deep.”

~ Isaiah 54:2 (MSG)

The dawn of each new year always seems like an ideal time to initiate change in our lives. A time to clear ground, to enlarge the canvas of our lives, and to spread out and think big! This requires a willingness to loose whatever is constraining us from reaching our goals and give ourselves the freedom to break fresh ground; plant new seeds; nourish them; and let them take root, grow, and be fruitful. With that in mind, here are some of the goals I have set for myself in 2018:

Become More Firmly Grounded in My Faith

My number one goal for the new year is to grow spiritually and strengthen my relationship with the Lord. This will mean clearing the way to spend more time with Him in contemplation and prayer and in reading His Word so that His love will dwell more deeply in my heart and ground me more firmly in my faith. His indwelling love is the soil in which my heart and soul are rooted and the sunshine in which my spirit flourishes and grows (Ephesians 3:17-19).

Become More Fruitful in My Writing

My second goal is to become more fruitful in my Christian writing. The Holy Spirit doesn’t want me to be afraid to share my gift of writing or to shy away from this work of ministry. If I remain faithful and obedient, He promises to help me uproot that snarled undergrowth of thoughts and feelings that strangle my creativity and threaten my fruitfulness. He will grant me the strength, courage, and self-discipline to reach out and turn even the coldest of hearts and darkest of souls towards the warmth and light of Christ (2 Timothy 1:7).

As FellowScript’s Editor, Spread Out—Think Big!

Thirdly, as FellowScript’s editor, my goal is to spread out—to think big! I hope to enlarge the circle of FellowScript’s tent by continuing to break new ground and cultivate new talent to expand our magazine’s scope and readership. As a member of InScribe’s Executive, I share their objectives of involving more youth and increasing our membership. Therefore, I plan to soon introduce a new YA Scribes Write page to FellowScript to encourage more young Christian writers to contribute to our magazine.

Deepen My Commitment to Exercise

My fourth goal is to expend more of my energy on physical exercise. Just as it is beneficial to stretch and strengthen ourselves mentally and spiritually, it is equally important physically. As the decades fly by with increasing speed, I’ve discovered that my fitness has steadily decreased. My joints are stiffer and my muscles less flexible. My body has grown weary fighting the Battle of the Bulge and sometimes—well—just plain weary! It is not only through caring for ourselves mentally and spiritually that we honour God, but also by caring for ourselves physically (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

Spread My Wings and Explore My World

Finally, I want to spread my wings and explore more of this wonderful world. The first phase of fulfilling this goal is to explore as much as I can of our scenic country. If everything works out as planned, I will be taking a motorcoach tour from Winnipeg to Niagara Falls this spring. The favourite part of my travels isn’t visiting cities or man-made sites, but exploring the natural world God created. Being out in nature always makes me feel closer to my Creator (Romans 1:20).

What new ground will you break, what good seeds will you sow, and what fresh fruit will you produce this year?

Photo Credits: © Nina Faye Morey

What comes first…the seed or the dirt? by Melanie Fischer

Without the dirt there is no where to plant the seed. Without the seed there is no how to produce more seeds in order to plant.

Do we writers need inspiration in order to write, or do we need to write in order to become inspired?

In my experience, it is when those moments of complete un-inspiration are combined with the

discipline of showing up that the Lord has blessed my pen the most. In the times when I have threatened to quit, begged to stop, stomped my feet or stuck out my lip in a pout, but put my fingers to the keyboard anyway, that suddenly—lo and behold—something turned on.

The farmer toils in his field, then one day stands back to see what has come from his works. This is

what encourages him to plant again—but not until the work is done first. It is the physical act of sitting down and writing that gives us the opportunity to look back on what we actually wrote. This often becomes the fertilizer for the next piece.

There is a practical fear—what if the farmer plants the field then it is struck by a drought? What if the writer sits down at the computer and the mind is struck by a drought? All that hard work gone to waste. “But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7, 8. Stay in the word, live by faith, pray without ceasing—that is what allows our works to sprout, even when the land dries up.

To address the fear that our works will be unoriginal and will all look the same, consider a handful of wildflower seeds. They look similar—until you plant them. As they grow, they develop and become unique and individual. Once the writer starts writing, the story will develop. It isn’t until the seed is planted though that we see what it is destined to become.

So…how do I keep myself and my writing fresh as new articles are produced? I look back at the works which were created in those moments of un-inspiration; those moments that the Lord reigned upon my crops just because I showed up to plant them. “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” 1 Corinthians 3:6.

Waiting for inspiration in order to write would be like a farmer refusing to turn on the sprinkler system until it rains. In order to write we must write. If this is what we genuinely feel called to do, let's make a plan of when to do it, show up, then do the work, even when we are not in the mood to do so. Plant the seeds and they will grow.

What is going to come first? The seed or the dirt?

Melanie Blogs about Purpose at: www.hungryforpurpose.com/blog

It's Harvest Time

I recently heard a story about a woman who went into a store and found God behind the counter. He asked her what she wanted, and she said “I want to buy a little joy and prosperity and a lot of peace -- not just for myself -- but for everyone.” God replied, “We don’t sell the fruit here…we just sell the seeds. Once you get the seeds, you have the power and authority to produce the fruits yourself.”

Have you looked out your back door and scanned the fields lately?
Did you become curious enough to want to know if your planted seeds were rising up to life? Or have you planted any seeds at all? Jesus spoke figuratively about sowing and reaping but His purpose was to explain the meaning of reaching out to others with the Gospel message. Why?
What is the work that is required from the believers? “The work of God is this: to believe in the One he has sent.” (John 6:29) Jesus said, “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

So if we are to believe, what beliefs are expected of us? Do we believe that God came down from heaven? Do we believe that he gives life to the whole world? Do we believe that in order for the Gospel to be preached we have a part to play? Is it enough to believe that Jesus exists? Even the devil exists. We have the duty of taking the good news as we travel the narrow road. We have the duty of spreading the good seed on the fertile ground along our journey to heaven. Think about it…didn’t someone plant your seed? Were you encouraged in the faith? Did someone remember you in prayer?

“Everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life…” (John 6:40) Isn’t that our earnings? Our wages? If we invest in a little sowing and reaping don’t you think the principle of getting a return on our investment will come about? An investment for eternity; more wayward souls brought home to glory. Or do we even believe the importance of pointing the way of Salvation?
What did Jesus do? Let’s pause by John chapter 4 for a moment. When Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman, she realized her need for God. As a result of her newfound joy, she ran back to her village to tell everyone she saw about this man who knew all about her and they all came running to see him. The seeds were scattered all over the village. It was fertile ground! The people needed to hear the good news about the Christ.

Seeds continued to germinate throughout Jesus’ journey. The Bible says that crowds followed him and were amazed. Seeds were scattered all over the mountain as Jesus miraculously fed the five thousand. Didn’t they witness a miracle before their eyes? Didn’t they learn about Jesus as Lord at that moment? Seeds were planted in the jailer’s heart when Paul was miraculously freed from prison. His entire family became believers. Seeds were gathered in the hearts of the Centurion’s home when his servant was healed. Yes, these families became believers, believers in Jesus, the one who came down from heaven to give life to the world.

What can we do? We can share the good news. We can wait upon God to water the ground. We can till the ground and keep it maintained. In other words, we can share the good news of salvation and eternal life to others and maintain a friendship with them and introduce them to God’s greatness. And all the while we are in the planting mode, God gives us the power and authority to speak and sow in his name. It’s not about a sowing a new plantation for the believers. It’s about reaping what has been sown, row-by-row, and person-by-person. God came to offer life; therefore God will bring the increase!

Jan Keats