If it’s true a watched pot never boils, then it’s a miracle my roses have bloomed. From the first tiny sign of a green leaf following my spring pruning I have checked and rechecked daily, measuring progress. I’ve watered and fertilized, weeded and sprayed. I felt personally attacked the day I found aphids trying to take up residence and I rushed to the garden shed to grab the proper insecticide. I have been over-diligent.
When the first tightly coiled buds began to form I announced it to my friends and family like a prospective mom announces her pregnancy. When those green buds grew to bursting and I saw the first traces of color, I danced among the bushes. The first delicate pink rose bega
n to open, exposing sweetness and velvet layers. I wanted to park myself right there in the garden and watch it finish unfolding into breathtaking beauty.
Now my bushes are loaded with yellow and peach and red and white tributes to the rose horticulturists who painstaking developed each strain.
I’ve poured a lot of time and effort into my roses and they have paid me back tenfold. I will enjoy them, take pride in them, share them and glory over them until they once again withdraw into their time of dormancy and dryness only to be coaxed into full bloom again once they’ve survived another winter.
My life has been a rose garden of winter trials and summer blooms. God has been the dedicated Gardner. He cares for me gently and with great attentiveness, pruning, coaxing, watching for attack, nurturing, and hovering over each sign of new growth. He encourages small green buds of hope and ministry, beauty and song into promises of great beauty and the scent of spiritual growth. My heart is overwhelmed when I think of Him, the Great God of the Universe, hovering over me with expectation and pride, waiting for me to fully open to the beauty of my current season.
I recently read Wildflowers from Winter, a debut novel by Katie Ganshert (http://katieganshert.com/blog/). She so beautifully showed her main character emerging from a season of cold and dark to the beauty of one who fully lets God hold her heart. It is a lesson we learn over and over in the ebb and flow of life.
Dark times will come, must come. But God promises newness and beauty will follow. Have you allowed Him to tend the garden of your heart? Have you seen beauty bloom when you thought nothing could ever come from your brittle branches? I’d love your comments on how the great Gardner brought you to life again.
But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people all about this new life.” Acts 5:19-20
