The Wisdom of Spring
The cover of this month's journal looks familiar to many
of us at this time of year. For many people, spring is their favorite
time of year. It is not only a beautiful time because of the beauty of
the many spring flowers that bloom so abundantly, but it is also a time
of birth. Baby animals seem to be under every bush, and the shallows of
lakes are awash with fish of every type and description, building and
maintaining their nests. One of my neighbors, who is one of the best
gardeners I have ever known, is fond of wishing that spring would never
leave, but we could not have spring year-round. When I hear a statement
like that, I am reminded of the old line that asks "why can't we have
Christmas all year long?" We all know the impossibility of that
statement, no matter how much we may enjoy the Christmas spirit, but it
is also important to recognize that spring is equally impossible to
have all year long. Like all of the seasons, spring serves a vital and
designed purpose, and too much spring would be as disastrous as too
much winter.
Every season has a designed purpose in sustaining life on this
planet. Summer is a time when animals and plants flourish and grow to
their sexual and biological adulthood. Food and water are available in
maximum quantities ideally, and plants and animals gain their maximum
strength and reproductive vigor. Maintaining balances between food
supplies and consumers is obviously a complicated business, and insects
and animals would be likely to eat themselves out of existence if there
were not some equalizers in the design of the system. One equalizer is
predators who can limit the number of plant eaters that would otherwise
destroy the vegetation and throw the whole ecology out of balance. The
problem is that predators can be limited or eliminated by a variety of
things--poor reproductive environments, other predators feeding on
them, ecological disasters, and the like. All of us have seen
caterpillars, beetles, or worms that eat all of the leaves off of
plants late in the summer. In our area we can have Japanese beetles by
the thousands that can strip my ash tree and roses in the front yard so
badly that no leaves are left. Before this process gets so badly out of
balance that it threatens the entire ecosystem, winter sets in and puts
a stop to virtually all of it. The plants lose their leaves and shut
down for the winter. The whole animal population goes into
seclusion--either by hibernation or at least a withdrawal from high
food demands. During the winter, many positive things happen to plants
and animals as the water table is recharged, nutrients are repositioned
for recycling in the environment, and reproductive processes are
coordinated for the coming of spring.
When spring actually arrives, there is a careful
coordination of events that benefit the ecosystem and everything within
it. Extra water is supplied because of more rain, snow melting, and
lower evaporation and transpiration due to the cooler temperatures and
plants not being leafed out. This increases the chances of survival for
every living thing. Massive birthing of animals means that the food
supply of predators is so enormous that overeating of the things
carnivores feed on is not going to happen. The explosion of the growth
of vegetation means that food supplies and hiding areas for animals at
the bottom of the food chain are provided. Insects that may have been
feeding heavily on plants in the late summer have their reproproductive
processes designed in such a way that they do not seriously impact the
supply of vegetable material that animals need in the spring.
If all of this were taking place year-round, it would be a very
short period of time before the system would be thrown seriously out of
balance. The seasons have a purpose, and every living thing has a
design within that seasonal make up. As the writer of Ecclesiates so
beautifully said it:
Everything has its appointed hour, there is a time for all
things
under heaven. A time for birth, a time for death. A time to plant and a
time to uproot... He assigned each to its proper time. But for the mind
of man he has appointed mystery, that man may never fathom God's own
purpose from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes
3:1,2,11, Moffatt translation).
--John
N. Clayton
Back to Contents
Does God Exist?, MayJun04.