There are many reasons why I enjoy being in the garden. I love seeing the progress, watching the growth, the sense of self-sustainability it can provide our family. But most of all it is probably just the peace it provides. The garden is the most peaceful place to be for me right now. I am often in there by myself, and it is quiet – which is a rarity during this season.
It is a place where I see so many parallels between the garden itself and the goodness of grace. There is the sheer mastery of the Creator to allow food to sustain us to come from just a tiny seed. How just an apple seed could grow into a tree that bears fruit for generations to come. To show us what great things He can do through something so small. Just like having even a small mustard seed of faith, can allow Him to move mountains in our lives.
But this week I was thinking more about the dirt. The dark, nasty dirt- and how it is in that dirt that the roots take hold, the seed sprouts, and when brought up into the light- can flourish and be all that it was created to be.
This week at our ministry night we were talking to the women we work with about how healing comes from revealing. More specifically, how God cannot heal what we do not reveal to Him.
I see the dirt as the mess of our lives. The mistakes, the regrets, the struggles, the debts, addictions, tragedies and trials- it is all darkness. It is all dirt. When we keep it all inside and try to move through life without revealing it, we stay stuck in the dirt. When we, the “seeds,” stay in the darkness, in the dirt, we simply cannot grow. We cannot become who or what we were created to be. But I believe that when we are willing to reveal the struggles, the heartaches, the mistakes to God- He can do incredible things within us. We are then shining Light into those dark places. We all know that without light a seed cannot grow into the plant it was created to become. I don’t believe we can find true healing and growth without revealing our Hearts. The old wounds, the fresh cuts – He can handle whatever you throw at Him.
When we reveal our hearts, He is faithful to heal them. It is a painful process, opening up your heart and letting Him know how you feel, how you were hurt, how you don’t understand “why.” But, in time, through growing in that grace, we can continue to rise, thrive and be refined.
Martin Luther King Jr famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.” Hiding and numbing our hearts and hurts will never take away the darkness.
I have seen so many lives changed once a heart was open to allow God to heal and transform. Such incredible transformations that “By the Grace of God,” could be the only explanation. Lives that now serve as hope to show the miracle- working, chain-breaking power of Jesus.
Our journeys here are full of darkness, and they can easily leave us stuck in the dirt, in the dark. But if we seek the Light of the World and open our hearts and our hurts to Him, there nothing that our God cannot do with our seed of faith.
“The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5
