Such joy in a garden is found in the simplest of His creative forms. The pleasure we derive from hours spent in His abundant beauty that surrounds us, is a gentle reminder of His continued guidance in our lives as He has guided creation from the beginning of time.
How great is the miracle that He loves us enough to share it in every waking moment that we exist?
The late summer rains lie heavily on the plants in my wilderness and the waters of my baptism are a weight that bends my Lenten soul!
As light as the ‘ashes’ are, I feel the extra burden that my baptism brings to my times of reflection as I listen for his whispers.
Whilst the rain is desperately needed, as is the baptism; both bring their share of responsibility that leave me pleading for the Son to shine again.
Yet, this is the Lenten course we follow. Our service is to Him and is His alone. So, as I bend, I pray on ‘bended’ knee for my ashes to be mixed with the droplets for together they form a medium for new growth, new plants, and new flowers to bloom in His creation.
When A Judge does not play Judge, in a court he is not a Judge in – then he is driven up the Via Dolorosa of social media to be crucified.
In my country we have a Judge, in fact a Chief Justice, the pinnacle of our legal system, who dared to bare a Christian truth. “I don’t hate anybody” – the fact that this was coupled to a statement that he loved the Jews and the Palestinians, he loved all nations and that love was part of his Christian belief, not hate.
He dared, because the ‘Son’ shines upon him.
In his own court he applies the rule of law that he is must adhere to as part of our constitution. In God’s court he is not expected to be a ‘judge’ he is required to be a Christian – because the ‘Son’ shines upon him.
Perhaps if more of us were to stand up and hold to the same principle, in that we are not required to be judges. We are not required to hold people to any standard. We are not expecting people to share our same views. But whatever standard they have, whatever views they have, we should love them. We should show them that the ‘Son’ can shine upon them. In fact, by doing so, we show that the ‘Son’ shines upon us.
This does not make us some select group of people above everybody else, but it does make us warmer than those who sit in the shade. If the ‘Son’ has shed its light on us, it should have warmed our hearts to all those who cross our paths and that warmth should be a blanket of comfort to all in need.
If the ‘Son’ shines upon us, we have no court to preside over, rather we have a far weightier task; spreaders of love. We are not confined to a court, rather, we are bound to the foundation of God’s law; ‘Love your God and love your neighbour as yourself. Perhaps mankind has lost the ability to know themselves and without being able to know themselves cannot love themselves. And if they cannot love themselves, they cannot love their neighbour. What they do love is the image of what society tells them they should be. And society has become used to judging everything, to the extent that we have even started to judge ourselves.
If the ‘Son’ really shines upon us, we should welcome those key figures in society who are brave enough to stand up and we should stand by them because the ‘Son’ shines upon us and we have heard His Whispers in the Wilderness and His greatest commandments!
Two of the most beautiful scenes enjoyed by mankind all over the world.
Yet at the same time, both scenes show the sky in colour and the world in silhouette form. The detail is lost against a God inspired backdrop.
For us to see all the nuances and shapes around us we must wait for the sun be a little higher than just behind the horizon.
Lent is like that!
We cannot just view our faith against the glorious backdrop delivered daily on our doorsteps, because then we see only the darkened version of the reality that faith is supposed to be. Even though the background is really impressive!
When we allow the “Son” to rise a little higher on our horizons, we discover the full beauty of what He has to offer us. Suddenly the backdrop comes into perspective and takes on depth and meaning. What was hidden in the silhouette becomes valley behind valleys and hills behind hills, generating an excitement of discovery.
Lent is a chance to see the Trinity on full display – from the time the “Son” rises in the east, we await a deeper understanding as He rises overhead and allows the Holy Spirit to blow His illuminating wind through the valleys of our sorrows and over the peaks of our happiness, giving the reality of our belief a complete landscape to be filled with all His glory.
A walk in the wilderness is to discover ALL there is about Him, not just a silhouette on a painted sky. Faith, like nature, needs to be seen from all the angles and under different light to be experienced as it is supposed to be. It is then that we get to praise Him for more than ‘just’ the sunrises and sunsets in our lives. May the “Son” rise before you this Lent as you discover parts of Him you never knew existed
Gardening with God gives us the
opportunity to not only seek Him out but everything He stands for:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
If we are only searching and connecting with one aspect of the Godhead, we miss out on so much of what He offers us.
Gardening is about giving everything over to; not only the Creator, but also the Saviour and Councillor, because gardening with Him is a complete process. An ‘all or nothing’ surrender, and a complete and awe-inspiring experience of the Trinity as it was meant to be! (Luke 14:33)
