A Season of Waiting

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!
~ Isaiah 30:18

It is March! That means spring is close at hand, and it seems like everything around us is starting to wake up after a long, cold winter. One such indicator is the buds forming on the sakura (cherry) trees. To say that the Japanese people enjoy sakura season would be an epic understatement. For them, it is an annual obsession which the whole country heartily enjoys. Sakura Forecasts have already started appearing on the evening news. They break it down in detail for each area of the country when to expect the “first bloom” and “peak bloom” so that everyone can make plans to spend time enjoying outings to see the flowers. It’s one of those annual reminders that signals a shift from one season to another and many people eagerly wait for the sakura blooms to come again.

Waiting is hard. Sometimes, like with sakura blooms, we spend much more time waiting for them to arrive than we do actually experiencing them. Then, when the fleeting blooms have run their course, we are faced with having to wait another whole year for them to arrive again. We do enjoy the shade of the tree’s green leaves during the summer months. Also, the cherry trees provide homes and food for a number of creatures in the neighborhood. We just don’t seem to get as excited over those benefits as we do when the flowers bloom.

And yet, the cherry tree is hard at work all year long. It is making progress towards growth and strength during the summer months that will make the blooms possible. It generates next year’s buds during the fall season and then encapsulates them to protect from winter weather. Even during those cold winter months, the tree is focused on conserving its energy and gathering its strength in the root sections. In fact, some arborists suggest that a cherry tree that does NOT experience at least one deep chill during the winter won’t be able to reach its full potential bloom in the spring.

Seasons of change and renewal happen in our lives as well. They are exciting and fresh when the “blooms” happen, but for long stretches it can feel like those dark, cold weeks of winter when not much appears to be happening. I chose the picture above because it shows the first bloom opening in the midst of a branch full of buds that aren’t quite ready yet. When we see the buds appear, we know that the flowers are not far off and we begin to anticipate the beauty they will display.

Emily and I are in the midst of a season of waiting as we prepare for mission work in Japan. Yet God has been working in us and through us all along. He has been faithful in walking alongside us each step in this process, and as we draw nearer to our target date we can’t help but feel like we are starting to see some activity in the “buds” along our branches. We are encouraged by ongoing conversations with a potential sending congregation. We have begun assembling the necessary paperwork and accompanying documentation for applying for visas. We have even gotten a small start on cleaning out attic spaces and organizing our belongings into different categories like “take to Japan” and “pass along to others.”

But we are also mindful that there are some important steps that still need to be completed. A formal agreement with a sending congregation is still at least a couple of weeks away. Our paperwork for living in Japan is still incomplete and cannot be submitted yet. We have reasons to believe that God is making a way for these to happen soon, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still waiting. So, we are trying to remain focused on waiting with the right mindset. We trust God to provide, and He has an infinitely better understanding of all of this than we do. We look forward to being able to share good news with you all in the very near future.