Tag: Gardening with God

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#fridayfootprints – Friday 18th February 2022

“… fed with the bread of tears.” (Psalm 80:5)

How often do we feel this way? When life just doesn’t seem to give us any breaks. When pain and suffering dominate every waking moment. When our cry is: ‘Why me O Lord?’ and we feel abandoned. Lost.

Our comfort is not in Him – it is Him in us.

When we cry out to Him, it is from our ‘tear room’; a place where we feed ourselves the bread of our own tragedies.

As much as this is an internal process, so is the plea to God an external cry. A call directed outside of ourselves. Yet, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are indwelt by God. His whispers that are heard in the wilderness that exists inside us, come from within us.

If we make our tears visible, we allow Christian fellowship through the guidance of the Holy Spirit to guide our comfort and support. But we must make it visible!  Otherwise, we manifest a storm of our own making and keep our tragedy shackled to our existence. By shifting the focus to the Spirit inside us we can ignore the storm and concentrate on the support system that the Spirit provides.

Let the bread of tears become a feast of compassion in communion with Christians.

Trust in Him inside you and reveal yourself to the world. His whispers are the truth of our existence.

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#fridayfootprints – Friday 11th February 2022

To find His light we must search for the light within us.

Finding the light switch is the process of discovering that the light inside us in indeed His light and it was never switched off. We live in stages where we allow the light to be shaded, sometimes partially, and at others, almost completely.

But it remains His light!

It is our light, given to us from the beginning of creation. Breathed into us as a whisper of God’s love. A light that pleads to shine. A light whose brightness brings unspeakable joy that permeates every cell of our being and reflects onto those in our company.

Finding the light switch is more about finding the dimmer control to see how high we can turn it. Sometimes it is in quiet reflection, or perhaps in praise and worship, or just the sights and sounds of creation. Each and all accompanied by the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit!

Let my light shine, Lord!

Gen 1:3 and 4:7

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#fridayfootprints – Goodbye 2019 Hello 2020

As the last few days and hours of 2019 are eaten away, #fridayfootprints bids farewell to Gardening with God, (the theme for 2019) and moves on to a new theme. The garden is being expanded and sees a return to the roots of Wilderness Whispers – the natural environment.

The Master Gardener stays with us in 2020 as #fridayfootprints in the theme #whenthewildernesswhispers goes in search for a deeper experience of the Trinity as nature communicates with us.

Living in Wilderness, with its forests, lakes, rivers and beaches, its wetlands and drylands, its farms and gardens, its sand dunes and mountain range, means that we are surrounded by nature every time we step outside.

And then, when the Wilderness Whispers, the Holy Spirit speaks to us in silence, yet we feel the vibration of His words in the deepest core of our being.

Wilderness is in a district of South Africa named Eden, and for tourists is on the “Garden Route’ – God’s Garden.

Join me in on the 3rd January for the 1st Friday of 2020 and another year of #fridayfootprints. We will walk God’s garden ’route ‘ to listen and feel His voice #whenthewildernesswhispers.

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#fridayfootprints – Friday 27th December 201-

Gardening is about having faith and being secure in the knowledge that if you do it long enough, and if you plant enough; then through God’s design a miracle happens. After years of fruitless and sterile cones, one of the cycads suddenly produced fertile seed.

With the smallest bit of effort – the simple pressing of the seed into the ground will result in baby plants popping up.

The plants were always beautiful and appreciated, lending a structural element to the garden. But that was not their ultimate purpose. They were there to produce viable seed. To reproduce! To spread! To multiply.

Our relationship with the Master Gardener follows a similar route. For some the journey from seedling to ‘seeder’ is a walk in the park. For others it is a lonely journey fraught with danger and frustration. People looking in at the garden, whilst they may appreciate the beauty, yet still fail to see its significance.

Gardening with God is not just about building a deeper relationship with God and it is more than an internal examination of Faith. It is a process of development until we produce fertile seeds and spread them before the Holy Spirit to be blown where they will find fertile soil. The seeds of salvation – Christ has come to save us – He is born, and through His Grace we may have life everlasting and His eternal love.

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#fridayfootprints – Friday 20th December 2019

As family and friends begin their annual preparations to join together in the celebration of Christmas, so we become aware that the reason for the journey they will all take, is to be together. To celebrate a unity of purpose through the joyful knowledge of what Christmas means to family.

The love that is gathered as the lilies of the fields. Little pieces of love that we harvest and combine. Each has its own form of love. Its own character or personality of love. But, gathered together to celebrate Christmas brings a new dimension.

The lilies in the vase bring the produce of the Master Gardener from the garden to inside the house so He becomes part of the celebration feast. Here, we all are exposed to the evidence of His abundant Love. Each stem is baptised in the same water and even though the flowers face in different directions they share a common base and a unified purpose.

The sounds of laughter fill the house and echo the joy brought by the flowers,

As we have Gardened with God, all year, His bounty is now visible, to be shared with all present and to be witness to our prayers for those unable to be here.

May you all have a Blessed Christmas.

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#fridayfootprints – Friday 13th December 2019

Every garden needs a ‘Night Star’. Every gardener too!

                        A reason to believe in a season of Hope.

A beacon of light that shines on the days to come whilst the days of the past are relegated to the shadows.

All the deeds of the year, the energy and sweat that have gone into working under the Master Gardener pale into insignificance with the appearance of the night star. Our bones don’t creak as much, and the muscles suddenly feel more pliant. All because we have sighted the ‘Night Star’ in our garden. Our garden’s own Bethlehem star.

It lights up the night sky with a warm glow that envelopes all who see it. A feeling of knowing that this isn’t the end of a year ‘Gardening with God’ but a sign of the beginning. A new year is just around the corner. A new birth for the garden. New dreams to be dreamed, new paths to be laid, eager for the advent of new footsteps.

Every garden should have its own ‘Night Star’. Its own reason for hope, its own joyful surrender to a future in the hands of the Master Gardener. Its own excitement at the birth of a new life.

A life and a purpose that the garden will bring Hope, Love, and Joy in abundance to all who are touched by the colours, scents and sounds of the “Peace which passes all understanding”.

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#fridayfootprints – Friday 6th December 2019

“Dance, then, wherever you may be ……..” (Lord of the dance)

 The garden dance, just my Lord and me,

The flowers dance in the evening breeze

Spirit-filled fairies in the waving trees.

The Master Gardener takes my hand

So, we dance to the beat of the garden’s band.

Oh, so joyous to dance around a summer garden with the expectation of Christmas in the air. Nature is bursting at the seams to tell its own Advent story as the birds scurry to and fro getting nests ready and eggs laid. The insects are eating their fill whilst the caterpillars and snails are running amok in the vegetable patch getting a head start on the Christmas bounty.

Such is summertime in a Wilderness garden; filled with wonder, filled bellies, filled with the happy sounds of a Christmas garden, and filled by the Spirit:

So ….  “Dance, then, wherever you may be”

                                              ….. Come and dance with my Lord and me ……

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#fridayfootprints – Friday 29th November 2019

It is hard not to know that Christmas is upon us!

The hydrangeas are coming into their first full flush, bringing a spectacular display to our garden. A sure sign, that here in Wilderness, Christmas is coming.

Beautiful round pink blushed cheeks, here and there a deeper red, with the odd light blues just starting to poke their heads out from their glossy green leafed cribs. These are our reminder that, not only is the season of Advent here, but it is also the season of visitors, all making the annual journey to the sea.

A year’s worth of hard work under the guidance of the Master Gardener is being rewarded with the garden bursting at the seams with its early summer fireworks display of colour and scents that the garden cannot wait to boast and show off to all and sundry.

When you just can’t wait for friends and family to share the bounty with you, then you know, Gardening with God was made just for Advent. A gardener’s gift that just keeps on giving,

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#fridayfootprints – Friday 22 November 2019

To know that God lives, is to know that He breathes. The gentle, slow, peaceful breathing in and breathing out. To know that God lives in me is to slow my heartbeat to His breathing rhythm.

And then, as the Holy Spirit breathes life into my world, so droplets are formed as His vapour breath condenses.

Creation is around me and I am bathed in it, drop for drop, every waking hour.

Every breath taken is a lung-full closer to a fuller relationship with Him.

Every breath breathed out is just one exhale closer to an eternity with Him.

Every droplet is a reminder that He lives and breathes in my garden, as the Master Gardener shadows me, watching my every move as I tend to His creation.

Oh, that I may have His droplets formed on me and know that He has breath enough and that He has  breathed on me, and I will not waste it!

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#fridayfootprints – Friday 15th November 2019

There are many special times in the garden.

                        Just after a gentle shower of rain has fallen …

                        As the sun sets on a day’s hard work …

Yet for me, the most special, that early morning peek just as the sun pokes its head over the horizon.

Coffee in hand, I am immersed in a peace and tranquility that brings me closer to God. My thoughts become prayers and my prayers become hymns sung in silence from a place so deep within me, that only God knows it exists.

Time spent in the early morning with the Master Gardener is what it is all about. This is the time that we can enjoy the fruits of our labours and the joys of His creation.

We can share the sunrise with all His creatures as a symphony of sound and colour erupts on the early morning stage. The presence of His Spirit is tangible in every touch of a petal or stroke of a leaf. The silence is so profound that the touch of a dragonfly’s tail on the water is like a sharp crack of thunder awakening the goldfish into shaking off his late-night blues.

Yes! Early in the morning ‘our’ song shall rise to Thee! We are Gardening with God and this is our time to praise Him.

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