Hello
Please receive today’s Holy Nougat
“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.” Isaiah 43:19 NLT
Many of us may be aware that with the stay at home/shelter in place measures that came with the transition from virus to pandemic, I tried my hand at farming. I don’t know that I have a green thumb per se; have never been in the 4-H, but stuck in an apartment required something of home. I had seeds, no balcony, a hint of soil – I was good to go.
I marveled at the determination of the seedings to break through the soil and flourish. Everything was leafy green and thriving. Then the heat of the summer came! Almost every plant drooped. I’d water with cool water and they’d revive … until the next day. In panic, I overwatered one (or maybe it had succumbed to the heat) and my plant never recovered. It had become a brown crown of drooped flower not even reviving for water.
After several days without a change in the situation, unless it was to admit that it was browner, and even the roots were dried up, I admitted defeat. I couldn’t dead-head the dried up bits. It was time to dump the garbage. And right in the middle of the dead bush were TWO spots of green! Life had been restored to my flowerpot. Hallelujah. Although I still don’t know what I was growing, the two bits of green said all is not lost.
And that’s how it gets with the dead and decaying situations in our lives. Things might have been going good for us, all flourishing and growing. Until the scorcher came and everything began to droop. It might be our health, relationships (casual and intimate), work, studies, finances or even our spiritual life. And no effort on our part has revived it. That’s our desert – dead , decaying.
But we have the Master Gardener. And since we are alive, there is hope for us. God has begun a new thing. With us and in us. Yes it has begun. God is intervening in our lives, turning things around; bringing life and freshness into dead and decaying situations.
Can we sense it? Can we see? It’s God at work pouring streams in the deserts created by Covid-19 or other preexisting conditions. Two (maybe one) hints of green in an otherwise dusty flowerbed. A sign that our God is up, and up to something good.
Streams offer refreshing to all who drop by; but we often forget the energy and force which gets the water from below the soil up to the surface! And that may be where we’re at now. If so, things may be a bit uncomfortable. Then what – what do we need to do? How about being open to the move of God’s Spirit whilst the transformation occurs? And being patient during the process?
In Christ’s love and grace . . .
