Bette Dickinson

Bette Lynn Dickinson has been on staff with InterVarsity for 5 years. She planted Imago Dei Arts Community, InterVarsity's first Arts plant. As an artist, Bette connects her journey as a painter, photographer, and writer in Kalamazoo with ministry to artists. She graduated from WMU with a BA in 2008, a Masters of Divinity from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary in 2011, and was ordained with the Reformed Church in America in 2014 as a Specialized Minister with InterVarsity. Bette and her husband love being parents for their son, Isaiah. You can read more from Bette at www.bettedickinson.com.

Contributions by Bette Dickinson

When we moved into our house, my mother-in-law gave us a little potted plant. Impatiens plants are appropriately named. They are impatient for water and wilt if not watered frequently. In the stress of our move, I neglected the plant for weeks. The flowers fell off and it turned deathly brown. I almost threw it away, but decided to water it and see what happens.

As laborers in the harvest field, we work and sweat, hoping for a positive result from what we plant.  Then there are the many months of silence and stillness in the winter months in-between the sowing and reaping seasons. Psalm 130 speaks of the journey of waiting in those dark, cold months for God to come through with the light of spring.

“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." - John 12:23-25

What happens in the soil, in dark places between sowing and reaping—in the waiting between fall and spring, between death and resurrection? If the viewer was able to peek into the darkness where a seed is buried, one could  glimpse it unfolding from death to life. But often we don’t get to witness this miracle.