1 John 3:1-3

1 John 3:1-3 
English Standard Version (ESV)

 Ever tried explaining planting seeds to small children?  It's harder than I might have thought, because it's all about the future -- you can't do it based on the reality that you're actually just putting a tiny seed into the ground and then covering it with dirt.  That doesn't make one think of plants at all.  And it's hard to explain how a tiny seed turns into a giant plant, when all that really gets added is water.  How do we make sense of that?  Yet it happens all the time -- we plant seeds with great faith that we take for granted, and those seeds turn into sunflowers and beans and all sorts of things..
  We have great faith in God to transform us as well.  We don't understand all the details, and it's still unclear to me exactly how God is going to transform us.  1 John states that what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that we will be transformed when God appears.  Our faith draws us forward and allows us to believe in what we cannot see.
  So this spring, as you note the new life appearing everywhere, remember that God will do the same with us, through God's amazing love that is given to us.  As you note this, try and work threads of the Gospel into your conversations, and see what the Holy Spirit can do with our efforts to compare the renewal of the world to the renewing of the soul.