I love Strawberries!! Their color, shape, and of course, their flavor. Yum yum yum!!! So, when we moved to the farm last year I knew we would have a strawberry patch. It wasn’t long until I had planted 32 strawberry plants!

Here’s something interesting about strawberries you may not know, I didn’t..

They are second year producers. That means I plant this year, but I won’t get any fruit until the following year. That’s a long time to wait for some succulent fruit to produce!!

In the meantime though,  I still have to water and nurture the plant until it brings a harvest. If I let the strawberry plants get to dry they will die. So nurturing the plant after it is planted is very important! I must say, I do get anxious to see the harvest. I try to enjoy the moment, just watching them grow and get well established in the ground, but strawberry shortcake starts calling my name and I want strawberries now!!

In those moments I have to remind myself that the harvest will come. I just need to be faithful in what has been planted. Stay focused on the promise that it will produce fruit if I’m faithful to nurture and take care of what I have planted in the ground.

There are seasons that this strawberry plants will have to endure before the produce. They’ll have to face fall, a time of change in climate and shorter days. Then on the heels of fall will come winter. Winter can be tough, especially in the North where we live. Temps get well below freezing for days and inches upon inches of snow fall each year. This is the season that those plants are really put to the test. Sometimes winter is to hard and the plants don’t make it through the winter season, but this is where the conditions and nurturing of that plant when it was first put into the ground becomes very important!  Would they make it? See, during winter when snow has blanketed the area we can’t see what’s going on under all the weight of the snow, the frozen ground, and seemingly lifeless environment. Is it strong enough to make it?! Did we do all we could to prepare them for this season?

And just when you think hope is lost you feel it, a shift in the atmosphere, a new season has arrived! Spring is here! The snow has melted and the ground is warming, all be it slowly, and one day you see it, LIFE is springing forth from the ground! Blooms are beginning to form, and fruit will not be far behind!!

All that time, all those moments of doubt and uncertainty, the harvest time has come! The struggle, maybe only for a moment, has lifted and it’s time to enjoy the bounty! In my case, I finally get to have some strawberry shortcake!

Much like those strawberry plants, we walk through seasons in our own lives. Some are like fall, where it seems things are changing and not going in the direction you had hoped. Maybe you feel like you’re in the dead of winter and everything is an up hill climb. You’re wondering how you’ll make it through. Remember, Spring comes next. All those things that seem dead are about to produce new life! Spring is a season of new beginnings and sometimes we need to let somethings die so that we can produce new things in our life. It maybe in relationships or consequences of your own personal choices. Where ever you are, whatever season you’re walking through it’s making a way for next season to arrive.

Maybe you’ve planted and toiled and you’re wondering, “where’s the harvest?” Just stay faithful to what you’ve planted and beleive the harvest is on the way.

It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.
1 Corinthians 3:7 nlt

For behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.
Song of Solomon 2:11-13 esv

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
Ps 1:3 esv