Annuals and perennials

I am wondering whether people can be likened to annuals and perennials.

Can some be perennials? The blessings of God seem to be upon them as they engage in a single steady work over the years. They may go through periods of dormancy. But the roots are there, and they bud again, and again, and again, in season.

Can other folk be like annuals? The blessings of God through them come in shorter spurts, and perhaps of greater variety, perhaps per season rather than steadily over seasons. There is need to replant annuals each year. Annuals form different figurations of blossoming, and the landscape would be poorer without them.

Can this be an apt analogy? Or should all who delight in God’s word be like that tree planted by streams of water, like the First Psalm says? In other words, as we grow in grace, should we all be solid perennials that stay put and thrive?

Well, this annual/perennial analogy somehow feels too apt to simply say that the tree's durability represents everything about the beauty of God expressed through individuals.

I suspect that tree speaks of the robustness of God’s life lived out in a person through the years, its steadiness and perhaps its ancientness. It speaks less to the varieties of ways God's life can be expressed. In my mind's eye, that scene of a single tree alongside streams of water is somehow enriched when other plantings accompany it, surrounding it, varying through the seasons.

It makes for a more complete paradise.

Now, to be honest, I write this today feeling a little out of season. But the Word must be engaged, in season or out of season. There is that, too.

Logos2Go

Psalm 1.2-3 … his delight is in the law of the Lord , and on his law he meditates day and night. 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.

2 Timothy 4.2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.