At This Moment

“My Father is the gardener.” John 15:1

Ask any gardener about the importance of dirt and their answer would be much different than mine. Bruce and I live in the middle of some acreage with plenty of trees and dirt surrounding our home. It is nothing unusual for us to be picking up little dirt clumps that we have tracked in. What a gardener would see as a necessary element, I waste no time grabbing the broom and discarding it or tossing it in the trashcan. What the gardener sees as a welcome guest to his garden I view as an intruder in my home.

Many times, God plants us right in the middle of a new season of challenges. We view it as an interruption…an intrusion…something we wish we could sweep out of our lives. We forget that God loves watching things grow, and desires for us to know Him intimately and grow in our relationship with Him. Any new planting of the Lord will display future blooms resulting in delectable fruit. We are not left alone in this divine endeavor. ‘The gardener is someone who tends. One who sees. One who plans – and plants. In life, so many unexplainable things happen that can make a person feel like everything is one enormous accident. Nothing about our existence is accidental. We were known before we knew we were alive. We were planned and planted for this moment in time.’ Chasing Vines Bible Study, Beth Moore, p. 5.

In what garden has God planted you for this moment in time? What has been tracked into your life that you wish could be swept away? It is all about the perspective of the dirt. What we see as an intrusion in our lives, God sees as an initiator of fellowship. What we see as death, God sees as life. Some of the things we continue to breathe life into, God desires its death. God’s economy always seems a bit upside-down to me, but that is the way of the gardens He establishes for us. Here is a fact on which we can all rely:

‘If God plants you, He will tend you. He knows exactly how much sun, water, and fertilizer each plant needs. And He knows how to make the plants in His garden thrive. Gardening takes time. Flowers don’t bloom immediately…fruit takes a while to form…and the gardener must put forth patient effort to help His plants to thrive. Why? Because God likes watching things grow.’ p. 7