Image: TA Boland
I have a plant in the African Violet family called a Gloxinia. I had never seen a plant like it before my mother’s funeral. I brought the Gloxinia home and learned how to care for and propagate it. I have given away numerous off shoots of this plant in the last twenty-three years since my mother’s passing.
When I give the young plants away, I always give the new plant owner a speech about the gloxinia’s growing habits. It will grow thick green leaves for a number of weeks and then will blossom for about three weeks. After the growing season is over, the entire plant will die off and there will be no growth visible above the surface of the soil.
The root ball is the key. Well-established root balls can remain dormant for as long as three months before a tiny green leaf once again emerges from the soil. Many people assume during this time that the plant is dead and throw the whole thing in the trash.
Everyone wants beautiful bell-shaped blossoms. No one wants to care for a pot of soil with no apparent growth in progress. The peculiar thing about this plant is that it cannot produce beautiful bell-shaped flowers without occasional periods of dormancy.
God’s Holding Pattern
The spiritual life of a Christian has similar cycles of growth and dormancy. It can be difficult to experience a period of dormancy where there is no visible fruit or blossoms in sight. We don’t have to think that this means that we have died spiritually or become stagnant in faith. It may mean that we are in God’s holding pattern; a period of quiet and rest until the season is right for blossoms and fruit.
The most dramatic biblical example of this is the story of Moses. In Exodus 2, we read that Moses, born an Israelite, lived in the royal palace as an adopted prince. He leaves the palace to visit “his own people” and witnesses a fellow Israelite being beaten by an Egyptian. Moses kills the Egyptian and buries the body. When Pharaoh discovered what Moses had done, he tried to have Moses killed (Ex 2:11-15).
We next find Moses hiding in Midian, marrying, having kids and shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law. Moses spent forty years in Midian before God spoke to him in the burning bush. Forty years as a husband and father, working to bring home food and care for his family. He spent forty years on the run, afraid of what would happen if the Egyptians found him. Moses spent forty years believing that he would never be more than a displaced shepherd of flocks.
Timing is Everything
What Moses couldn’t see as he shepherded his flocks and lived a routine life of forty years was the hand of God at work. The narrative reveals that “during that long period” the king of Egypt died, the Israelites groaned in their slavery, and God heard their cries (Ex 2:23-25). During the time that Moses lived in Midian, he likely thought he was a permanent foreigner and a forgotten fugitive. But God was setting the stage for the biggest act of redemption in ancient history.
The rest of the story is well known and can be read in Exodus. Moses goes to Pharaoh to demand that he let the Israelite slaves go free. After numerous mighty acts of God, Moses leads the Israelites into the wilderness to begin the journey to the land that God had promised them.
The forty years spent by Moses living in a foreign land weren’t idle or wasted. God was working in the background to prepare the stage of history for the events to come. Moses was educated and trained in the royal palace and when the time was right, he was used by God to lead a nation to a new life with God.
Here are three things to remember if you feel you are in a dormant season:
1. We are made by God’s design. Seasons come and seasons go. We do not have the power to force something to happen that is out of God’s design. Trust that God knows what he is doing and wait.
2. Roots matter. While a plant is dormant, the root system is growing deep and strong so that it will support the plant’s production in the right season. If you’re feeling like you are not blossoming and bearing fruit in your spiritual life, then grow long, deep roots of faith in Jesus. When our roots are deep, we bear much fruit at the right time.
3. God is working. Life is less about our individual life than we think it is. Life is about the mighty work of God in the world. Our blooming season follows the growth of long, deep roots. God coordinates our growth and productivity with the mighty works he is accomplishing around us.
Be patient. Grow deep roots in the faith. Trust that God is working.
James 1:2-4 “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various rials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing”.
Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart”.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end”.
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