Week 6 Devotional: Mushrooms (Nate Burgland)
Mushrooms!
Morel mushrooms have always held a special place in my heart. I never fully understood why until I took my own kids mushroom hunting. There’s something special about getting out deep in the woods on a quiet foggy morning and seeing all kinds of new green growth after a cold gray winter. There’s also a good deal of mystery surrounding morels…they generally can’t be farmed or mass-produced artificially, and nearly every old-timer has their secret spots and ways of knowing when it’s time to go looking. But most importantly, it’s one of those things that passes down from generation to generation. I know I’m not alone in looking back on fond memories as a kid, following my dad and sharing in the contagious excitement of spotting one that’s been hiding in plain sight. Perhaps I’ve even taken my love of morels too far…ask my wife sometime how I proposed to her.
But why am I talking about mushrooms in light of Zach’s last message? 1 Corinthians 13:7 tells us that love ‘endures all things.’ And many times when we try to do this on our own, we end up failing to endure or bitterly rolling our eyes and gritting our teeth to just get through it. But when we look to our Father to do this in us and grow us in the process, something beautiful happens. We don’t always see it right away, but it’s a kind of growth that isn’t temporary or artificial. If you were to ask my girls what morels need to grow, they would be pretty quick to recite “rain, warmth, and that special time of year.” Just as a mushroom receives all 3 of these from the Father, so do we in a sense when we look to Him through difficult times. He shares in our tears, gives us the most warm and genuine love, and cultivates this in us at exactly the time in our lives when He intends us to grow. Something to consider next time you have the opportunity to enjoy a mushroom!
-Nate Bergland