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In Ecclesiastes 3:11, we read that God makes everything beautiful in its time. It is comforting to know that nothing is wasted in God's economy, but all of it will be used for our good and His glory. You're invited to join us for poignant conversations and compelling interviews centered on believing for His beauty in every season.
Shannon Scott (00:33)
Well, hey there friends and welcome back to the Everything Made Beautiful podcast. I'm so glad that you're here today because I have been genuinely excited about this one. And I know I say that about everyone and I am excited about every podcast, but I mean, like I've been carrying this around in my head for a couple of months excited and that is always my sign that something needs to get out of my head.
and either down on paper or into a conversation with you. So I am sitting outside for inspiration here at Deepwoods Refuge. So you'll likely hear the trees and the wind in the background and I feel great about it. So, okay. I was in Florida recently because my friend Macy and I surprised Maggie, my oldest, with a birthday trip to see Dancing with the Stars in Orlando. Now, as an aside, my
Goodness, those professional dancers are beyond talented. It is mind-blowing to me all they can do with their bodies and it made me marvel at God's creation while I was sitting there. Okay, that part was for free. It has nothing to do with this podcast. So let's get back to it. Okay, so one morning in Florida, I was just standing outside having my coffee and giving my brain a rare unscheduled moment.
which if you know me is basically a miracle. And I was looking at the trees there in central Florida and there it was. That gray ghostly wispy moss hanging off all the branches. It was very still and it was a little ⁓ mournful honestly because it was just so gray. But the draping was also beautiful and it looked a bit, you know, whimsical.
And I thought, that's dead, right? Or is it alive and it's like a parasite feeding off of this perfectly good tree? And I felt a bit sorry for the tree because it had something slowly taking from it every day, all day. And I began to get really curious about that familiar sight on trees in the South. So I started researching to prove myself right. And as it turns out, I was wrong.
on both counts. And the moment I found out how wrong I was, I thought there is a whole podcast episode in this. And actually there's more than one. So today we're starting a three episode mini series called Dormancy is Not Death. And episode one is built around this concept, which is something I've said in one way or another for years as I've taught on seasons and it's something I believe down to my bones that dormancy is not
death but stay with me because Spanish moss believe it or not is about to prove it. So let me tell you what I had to find out through research and what most people walking past these trees in Florida have no idea about including me before this deep dive. What everyone calls Spanish moss is not actually a moss at all. It's a flowering plant.
It belongs to the bromeliad family, which is the same family as pineapples, which I realize sounds ridiculous, but hang on. It looks just like moss and it just looks like moss. It mimics the appearance of something it isn't. And here's the really remarkable part. Spanish moss is what botanists call an epiphyte.
which means it's an air plant. So it has no root system in the ground. None. It doesn't connect to the tree beneath it in any like a vascular way. So it takes nothing from the tree it rests on. So the tree is simply a place to be held and to be positioned toward the light. So everything Spanish moss needs
moisture, nutrients, microscopic atmospheric particles. It draws directly from the air around it. So it lives entirely on what comes to it. It survives by receiving, not by taking. Okay, you know we're going to come back to that. But first, let's talk about those gray threads that made me a little sad because they seemed so mournful. Each
strand of Spanish moss is covered in tiny little scales called trichomes. They're what give it that silver gray color. So in dry conditions those scales look like dead threads. They look lifeless. The whole plant looks ashy and spent and ancient like something that stopped a long time ago. But when it rains
When water hits those trichomes, they become transparent. And the moment they go transparent, the chlorophyll underneath shows through and the entire plant turns green. The life was there the entire time. You just couldn't see it in the dry season. You know, I just have to say before we go any further, we are not good at reading what we can't see.
We don't accurately assess what isn't visible to us. We look at a season of stillness in our own lives, know, spiritual dryness, apparent inactivity, that flat gray feeling where you're still showing up but nothing feels alive, and we diagnose it. But we often do it inaccurately. We call it dead. We start agreeing with the voices, whether inside our own heads or outside of them.
that say this season obviously means something is fundamentally, permanently wrong. And we can also do the same thing with the people we love. Maybe someone goes quiet or someone who used to be vibrant and visible just seems to hang there, gray and still, and we don't know what to do with dormancy. So we either rush to fix it or we slowly pull back from it or we quietly reach our own conclusions about what it means.
Here's what I want to say to every single one of you who is in a season that looks gray right now or who loves someone in one. Dormancy is not death. The chlorophyll is still there. The life is underneath. What looks like a season of barely hanging on is not the same thing as a season of being finished. We have confused these two things too many times and it has cost us.
It has cost us the tenderness and space we owed ourselves, and it has probably also cost us the patience we owed the people we love. We can be real uncomfortable with circumstances that don't resolve quickly and get tied up with a pretty bow. But when you and I are in a gray season and we assess it as dead, that's not what God sees. In fact, Isaiah 42.3 says, a bruised reed
He will not break and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. This is written about Jesus. This is a description of how he tends to what is fragile and almost spent. He doesn't look at the bruised read and conclude it's done. He doesn't see the smoldering wick and extinguish it because it's barely producing any light. He tends it. He protects it. He refuses to make the misdiagnosis. He doesn't look at the gray.
and call it dead. Whatever brought you to this episode today, and while I genuinely don't know what you're carrying, I feel confident you're carrying something. I want you to sit with this. The God who made you sees the chlorophyll underneath your dry season. He is not reaching the same conclusions about you that you might be reaching about yourself.
Now here's the part of this whole Spanish moss research journey that made my pulse race a little because it takes the whole thing one layer deeper. And fair warning, we're going to get a little sciencey right now, but I promise it's worth it. And after all, God made science and creation is declaring his glory. So check out what creation has to show us about the character of God today. Inside those gray hanging threads of Spanish moss,
inside what looks purely decorative draping, like it's just there to make Florida look like Florida, there is a compound called diostinin. It's a plant steroid that contributed to early cortisone and hormone synthesis research in the 20th century. So scientists actually found something inside Spanish moss that changed the course of medicine. Okay, did you get that?
A revolutionary medicinal discovery was found in something gray and unremarkable and overlooked by most people walking past it. It reminds me of 2 Corinthians 4-7 that says, we have this treasure in jars of clay. The jar may look unremarkable, but the contents are something else entirely. Friend, if you have spent any time lately feeling like a jar of clay,
worn down, nothing special to look at, a little worse for wear. The question is not about the jar. The question is about what's inside it. Endormancy doesn't empty the jar. It just makes it harder to see what's in there. What God has placed inside you does not evaporate in a quiet season. It waits.
You know, Spanish moss is not just called a flowering plant. It does actually produce flowers, though almost nobody ever notices them. They're tiny, like just a few millimeters tiny, and they're pale blue, green to yellowish in color. They appear in spring and early summer tucked within the gray hanging strands. They blend
almost perfectly into the plant itself which is why they go undetected. But here's the fun part y'all don't miss this. The fragrance of the flowers is entirely disproportionate to the size of the flowers. The flowers produce a sweet vanilla like scent and it's actually most potent at night when the plant releases it most strongly to attract
pollinating insects in low-light conditions. So you can be standing near Spanish Mosque at dusk and catch this unexpected sweetness in the air without ever being able to locate its source. The flower may be invisible, but the fragrance is undeniable. So here's a plant that looks dead, that looks gray and spent and unremarkable.
that most people walk right past without a second glance and hidden inside it, emerging from it actually is a fragrance that arrives before you can even find its source. Sweet, unexpected, completely disproportionate to what the plant looks like from the outside. In other words, you can smell it before you can see it. 2 Corinthians 2.15 says, for we are to God.
the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. So we as believers are literally called an aroma, not a display, not a performance, not a visible trackable output, an aroma, something that arrives in a space before anyone can locate exactly where it's coming from that affects the atmosphere around it without announcing itself that is received.
rather than achieved. And the Spanish moss produces it most mostly in the dark. In the dark. I want us to sit with that for a moment because I think it matters enormously for those of us in quiet seasons. And you might be in a season where you feel utterly invisible. And quiet, invisible seasons are tough to navigate.
The seasons where you're not on a stage, not producing visible fruit, not living out your dream calling, not feeling the abundance you've been promised, not feeling heart swells of devotion, not sure anything you're doing is registering with anyone, including God. Where you're suffering, grieving, reeling, hurting, or maybe just numb. The gray, still, apparently dormant.
seasons. But these are often the seasons when the fragrance is strongest. Not because suffering is romantic, or because God needs you to be in pain to use you. That's not what I'm saying. But because fragrance, real fragrance, the kind that changes the atmosphere of a room comes from what has been pressed, from what has been quiet and hidden and doing its work in the dark. The flowers are invisible.
the fragrance is undeniable. So you may be in a season where nobody can see what's happening in you, where you feel like the output is invisible and the work is hidden and the whole thing looks gray from the outside. But what if the fragrance is already in the air around you and you just can't smell it yourself? What if the most powerful thing you're producing right now is the thing you can't see?
Here's one more thing about Spanish moss that's worth knowing. It doesn't climb. It does not grow upward toward the light on its own. It hangs suspended downward, dependent on something else to hold it and to position it toward the sun. Every bit of light it receives is because of where it has been placed, not because of how hard it has been striving. I mean, does that preach or what?
I have spent so much of my life trying to climb toward the light, trying to manage the angle, make sure I was visible in the right spaces, productive in the right ways, moving in the right direction, making the right connections, being in the right place at the right time, always ready, always on, always available, always yes. And I want to tell you, as someone who has walked through a significant season of subtraction and stillness in recent years, there is something about just being held
that I did not understand before now. It's the being held that makes the difference, not my striving, not my ascending, just resting in the place I've been put and trusting that what holds me is positioning me toward exactly the light I need. I think this is what Jesus means in Matthew 11 29 when he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle.
and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. Rest, not achievement, rest. Dormancy isn't failure and dormancy isn't death. Often dormancy is rest, restoration, replenishment and protection. So here's where I want to leave you today. A few questions worth sitting with this week, not as homework, but truly as
honest invitations.
What in your life have you called dead that might just be dry?
What season in your faith, in a relationship, in the version of yourself you used to recognize, have you been trying to cut out or fix, explain away or throw away that God might still be quietly, carefully tending?
and the harder one. Where have you been trying to climb toward the light when what you might actually need is to hang? To be held by something stronger than your own effort, positioned by someone with a much better view than yours. The trichomes are still there. The green is underneath. You might just need some rain. So dormancy is not death. I need you to know that.
and I need you to hold on to it, especially in the seasons where everything in you wants to believe otherwise. He is always making everything beautiful, including the parts of you that look gray right now.
Be sure to come back next week for part two of this series where we're going to talk about a very different kind of plant that drapes over Southern trees. It's the same landscape, but a completely different story. You don't want to miss it. Thank you so much for being here today. And if this episode met you somewhere real, I would genuinely love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram or reach out through the show notes.
And please, if this is the kind of content that's helpful to you, share it with someone who might need it. That's how we find each other out here. But until next time, be on the lookout for the way God is making everything beautiful, including you.