I just returned home from a church conference yesterday.
And I just shot the picture above. Just this morning.
And I have something important to tell you about it, if you will indulge me by reading on.
Late, late last night, after unpacking, then promptly picking, snapping, stringing, blanching and freezing over a quart of green beans that were screaming at me from my neglected garden...
...I was watering said garden to the soothing sounds of cicadas.
I gave all the raised beds a good drink,
then shuffled in my pajamas, blissfully barefooted, over to the many containers,
beginning with two large galvanized buckets of carrots.
Then I turned my water hose onto
the vintage Radio Flyer red wagon and the vintage wooden trug, both filled with lantana -
about the only thing that can sit in a container in full sun, and take these hot, humid southern summers.
Then the containers of zinnias.
Then the shady area, where only impatiens grows in the
various and quirky containers in which I have planted them.
Interesting name: "impatiens".
I looked at my antique typewriter - a gift from my neighbor - expecting to take in
the joy I always feel when I think of planting flowers in that unexpected space.
{The typewriter was already in this shape when I lovingly gave it a new home and a new purpose -
outside, in my shade garden. Take heart, fellow antique typewriter lovers - I would never take a mint machine and plop it outside.}
Those impatiens were dead.
I'm telling you, from my vantage point, there was nothing left. In fact, I had to squint in the barely-lit darkness to even see if there was anything...anything at all in the carriage of that typewriter,
which before I went out of town
was lush with coral-colored petals and green leaves.
Nothing. There was nothing but dried up sticks and stems. I even walked
over, and bent low to investigate by the light of the twinkle lights in
the trees overhead...
...with the thought of setting the hose down, and pulling out the whole plant.
But I was too tired.
For some strange, unknowable reason, I watered anyway.
I remember thinking to myself, "Why am I doing this? I must be out of my mind."
As I was sleeping, overnight, I heard rain. This morning, I did my usual - I went
outside to sip coffee and peruse the gardens.
I stepped off the back deck, turned left, and screeched to a halt, my mouth hanging open.
I ran back inside to grab my camera.
The Holy Spirit spoke to me, in that moment.
"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.…"
Dear one, the Lord has sent you here today...
He has sent you to me, and me to you,
to tell you this:
That which seemeth to be dead, will spring to life in one night, when God says, "Live!"
Keep planting. Keep watering. And trust that His Word will fall from heaven and succeed.
Scripturally, His Word is both seed and rain. Both metaphors
are widely used by the Holy Spirit to help us understand the power of
everything God has spoken.
Hear Ecclesiastes:
Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.
Things unseen and deeply planted always spring up in
ways we do not understand, and cannot predict.
"And Jesus was saying, "The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows-- how, he himself does not know." (Mark 4:27)
Take heart. Have patience...don't be "impatiens".
God is in the business of making things alive again.
