Day 88 - Faith, while trees are still in blossom

1 Faith, while trees are still in blossom,

plans the picking of the fruit;

faith can feel the thrill of harvest

when the buds begin to sprout.

2 Long before the dawn is breaking,

faith anticipates the sun.

Faith is eager for the daylight,

for the work that must be done.

3 Long before the rains were coming,

Noah went and built an ark.

Abraham, the lonely migrant,

saw the light beyond the dark.

4 Faith, uplifted, tamed the water

of the undivided sea,

and the people of the Hebrews

found the path that made them free.

5 Faith believes that God is faithful:

God will be what God will be!

Faith accepts the call, responding,

""I am willing, Lord, send me.""

Fred Kaan

I have not appended a YouTube version because the ones I found were not very good and when we recently sang these words in a service, I set them to a tune we already knew – The Servant Song (Brother, sister, let me serve you). There are plenty of tunes with the metre 8787.

Fred Kaan’s lyrics are usually poetic and relevant. These ones, linking the concept of faith to tree blossom, fit that brief. The first stanza explains that faith looks forward, it expects things to happen in their season. This anticipation is not a longing, but a foretaste. The second verse echoes this thought, that day will follow night but, we are then to use those hours of daylight productively. Then Fred Kaan mines Scripture. Both Noah and Abraham had faith and began to do what God wanted before the ‘correct’ season appeared. Moses is not mentioned in the fourth verse, but it is his faith that enabled the children of Israel to escape from Egypt.

The last stanza emphasises that God can only be true to his own nature. He is faithful, full stop. Our own faith tells us this and we live as if this were always true – which it is. But we often demand proofs – like Gideon with his fleece, not once, but twice. We learn: day will always follow night, blossom and buds promise a harvest, which nearly always arrives. Those examples from the world around us encourage us – yet people without a faith also anticipate those things. Noah’s certainty was shared by no-one until the rains began. Moses too had to fight not only Pharaoh but also dissent among the Israelites.

All these examples of faith build to the finale: Faith accepts the call, responding, "I am willing, Lord, send me”. It is only when we truly have faith that we can respond in full to what God wants of us. Very few Christians can answer such a call without going through the baby steps of the previous verses: noticing God’s faithfulness in nature, learning about God’s faithfulness in his Word, accepting the true nature of God and then being attuned to listen for our call to a specific service for God, his followers, the world around us – whatever it might be, knowing that our faith is fed by God’s own faithfulness.

Elaine Kinchin