Dear Brethren,

Have you ever noticed how in nature there's always a pattern? In the spring, everything starts out new. The deer and all the woodland animals give birth to their young. The trees and plants all begin to pop out new buds. Winter is beaten back and weather starts to get milder. This is when God's Holy Day season begins, God's plan for mankind, which also runs in a cycle. Coincidence? I don't think so! God uses nature to show us that things do run in a cycle, physically and spiritually. 

As Spring turns to summer, vegetation grows more abundantly and the new "critters" have the best chance to grow and get strong. In many parts of the world, farmers are able to harvest early crops, and hopefully several cuttings of hay. Then we move into fall when the main crops are harvested, the weather starts to cool down a bit and daylight gets shorter. The leaves on the trees turn colors and start to fall off, and the woodland animals, hopefully, have eaten enough to tide them through the winter. Then winter comes, everything goes dormant and waits for spring so the whole cycle can start again. 

In trees, when one of these cycles is complete they get what's called a "growth ring," which shows how much the tree has grown. And so it is with us. 

Conversion is like a growth ring, where each year, God utilizes His annual Holy Days for our spiritual growth. A spiritual "growth ring".  Each spring God has us refocus on what really matters through the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread and then He would have us take the lessons taught and apply them to our lives, in order that we may grow. 

Each year, God symbolically has us take an inward spiritual core sample to see what our growth rings look like. He wants us to see what He sees. He wants us to take to heart what He has shared with us this past Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread in order to build upon the work that He has started in us. Let's take these lessons with us as we go forward from here. So that we may continue to grow "until we all reach the unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13 NIV).

Jolinda and I send our love to everyone.  You are in our prayers.

Have a blessed Sabbath.

Dave