Master Gardener – INSPIRATION with an ATTITUDE

So Who Needs Crayons??

Here‘s the scenario: I’m in the back yard early in the morning trying to have some undistracted time with the Lord, but my attention is consistently drawn to the sensate beauty around me. Albeit my patio garden couldn’t hold a citronella candle to some of the other gardens around in this area, yet the songs of the birds, the wind in the trees, the morning sunshine dappling through the leaves, the color and contours of the flowers and the cool of the morning air all combine to lure me away from exercising the discipline I had intended. Adding to that, my imagination now wanders to various projects I would like to work on next to improve certain areas of my little spot: weeding, fertilizing, installing liners to prevent runoff when the summer rains make their appearance. So, yeah, I’m definitely having some difficulty staying mentally on my original task this morning.

Then it hits me—wait a minute! This is how God Almighty thinks of me! Psalm 139 tells me that His thoughts are continually toward me, and that if I could count them, they would outnumber the sand!

He sees me as more beautiful than a garden’s beauty, more distracting (if that were possible for God) than the delights of my own current diversions. His mind is consistently excited about the work He intends to accomplish in me next: shoring up the new plantings of faith and growth so that the inevitable rains of life will not wash the progress away, rooting up the weeds of shame and fear that cause damage to the mind and heart, watering and feeding for greater growth, and, yes, pruning, which is necessary for new branches to appear and for increased productivity.

But what is even more amazing is that this work of the Master Gardener is NOT due to any anger or frustration on His part. It is, much to the surprise of many who would consider themselves “religious”, an expression of His joy, just as it is a joy for me to work in my garden!

I’m not angry at my garden because of the weeds and the poor soil, or the rocks in the wrong places. Of course, I don’t want it to stay that way. So also does God Almighty, in His wisdom and sovereignty, make decisions about what needs to be changed and rearranged in my life to fit His grand, overall design. Now, I can submit willingly to His decisions, or I can choose not to. Have you ever had a weed that “fought back” when you tried to pull it? When it didn’t just slide out with the first yank, what happens next? When the weed refuses to be pulled, it gets uncomfortable for the weed, as well as all the ground around it, at least for a while. Ouch.

I certainly don’t give up on my garden during the winter seasons of dormancy, but cover up the roots to keep them warm and alive until the inevitable return of spring. Neither does my Heavenly Father disown me in the winter seasons when it “appears” that nothing is happening, or it looks like all the former beauty of passion and enthusiasm has withered away and disappeared.

It is my pleasure to work in my garden heartily to spread the ashes of “recycled soil” from my burn pile to other areas for increased nutrition. Ashes are not pretty; and the burning process gets pretty hot, and then smolders for a long time creating even more ash. The pile itself isn’t much to look at, but the soil is some of the most fertile in my entire yard. So also does my Father consider when He views the ash piles in my life—the heartaches, the disappointments, the bad decisions, even the sin and corresponding consequences— to give me “beauty for ashes”. (Isaiah said that…)

Here’s to the beautifully distracting colors of spring! And the reminder that we are even more beautiful to our Gardener.

Dirty Hands… Happy Heart

pixabay

Green will return!

Spread your wings!!

From the yard.

First, let me just say that…

…my father-in-law is a Master Gardener and I have turned to him more than once for advice and assistance. George does things correctly…the first time. He has patience and experience; he is a builder of things. He designed a special birdfeeder for my garden, and not only explained, but also got his hands dirty helping me “re-do” some potted plants that desperately needed to be, well….re-done. In spite of my obvious inexperience, there was no chiding, only gentle and joyful condescension like a father to a child.

Our lives, our relationships, our families, and our own hearts are so much the same as my innocent garden with all its mess in the midst of beauty. Who saw the divorce coming? How could anyone have prepared for the accident? Lost the house, what now? Why does life have to be so hard?!

Master Gardener or invested amateur, navigating through life’s gardens takes more than the basics, even more than the best planning. We, all of us, none excluded, need help, and usually more than a little. We need the original Master Gardener Himself to walk through the garden of our lives, tending the soil, rearranging the environment, mulching, weeding and nurturing us. And along the way, He makes us flexible, creative, patient, and attentive to what He supplies for our needs.

This is my offering. A few seeds and grains of dirt from my life’s garden to yours.

I hope it helps good things to grow on your side of the fence!

—-dawnlizjones

A gardener by any other name….

Not being a gardener by natural intuition, I have had a propensity to plant things in less than ideal places and in less than ideal conditions. All a plant needs I learned in grade school science classes: dirt, sunlight, and water, right? With this unimpeachable wisdom I have destroyed many an unsuspecting specimen of innocent flora. And destroying plant life can become an expensive hobby. My lack of foreknowledge and pre-planning has caused me a certain amount of anxiety over my green (sometimes brown) friends. As one insightful person once put it, rather than the conventional “ready, aim, fire!” kind of gardener, I tend to be more of the “ready, fire, aim!” variety. I like to think of my ‘scapes’ as controlled chaos, which at times may be more chaos than control. Then I get disappointed when I find my beauties are just not living up to my grand expectations. Too much sun, too much shade, too much water, too little water; why does life need to be so picky?! So I uproot my little designs to rearrange their environment, water others, improve the quality of the dirt overall, little by little. I invest in soaker hoses, and then I can’t divine where I’ve planted them, so they end up with punctures and ruptures as I try to plant over them. Does any of this sound familiar…to anyone? Autumn comes and I’m happy about the plants that have survived the brutal late southern Missouri summers (as well as my decidedly lacking gardening prowess) , while other plants seem to just give it up and die off.

Sigh, yet another failure. Mulch what I can to protect for the winter season and retire the tools until spring with a certain determination to try, try again.

Then March and April finally arrive, and with it tiny green things begin to emerge, miraculously, unexpectedly, where apparent death had conquered just a few months before! And not only do they emerge, but explode onto the scene, taller, stronger and more vibrant than when first planted! I guess some living things are just made to keep living, despite my inexperience and ignorance. And, of course, others don’t. But I have an important hypothesis: if the roots are good, the plant will try again, because that’s the way it’s designed.

I have also learned, am learning, and will continue to learn, the importance of working with, not against, the natural environment. I can increase the soil quality, I can irrigate (until my dear husband frets over the water bill), but I cannot control the sun, the rain, or the temperature. God may have put me in charge of a few things, but the weather is not one of them. And evidently working with the environment would include: a) being flexible, b) considering my timing, c) increasing my creativity, and d) seeing the beauty and usefulness in what God supplies in my particular garden, even if at first it appears inconvenient or uncomfortable. Incorporating these four components—skills they are actually—will not only increase the productivity and loveliness of my garden, but also decrease the stress and anxiety associated with my new hobby.

Hmmm…

Now, God has a time-honored way of communicating with us on what could be coined as a “natural level”, in the sense that what we see in nature corresponds many times with lessons that are extremely applicable to life in general. The tangibles can help us to understand the intangibles. For starters:

Lack of knowledge has a way of messing things up. I realize that is not a nice theological way of putting it, but if for any appreciable length of time you have been a card-carrying member of your local garden club, (or of the human race for that matter), you understand this concept. There is biblical precedent to back it up. In the Old Testament, God said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (1) Yes, well, clearly this includes my plants. But of infinitely greater significance, our lack of knowledge, wisdom, and insight can severely and adversely damage those around us. Human relationships are costly, and foresight is expensive than hindsight. I need help, I need correct information, but recognition of my need is the first step toward wise cultivating in my personal people-garden. (For what it’s worth, one my on-going prayers is that God would grant grace to those who have to encounter me in any way today…)

I understand—yes, even me—that roots do more than hold a plant down should the gravitational pull of the universe change. There’s the hydration issue, the nutrition issue, and even the reproduction process in some plants is in the roots. I am told there are plants that, because of the way they are designed in their root system, are made to die off just up top, and relax for a while underneath the warm soil until it’s time to make their way to the surface again. My husband, Bob, who has an alphabet of letters behind his name with his multiple science degrees, gave me a fancy name for this, but I’ve since forgotten it. It’s the idea of programmed rest that I’m interested in—what appears to be dead is merely dormant, and given time and patience, and adequate supply for basic needs, it will return and flourish. That’s the way it’s made. People are amazingly resilient also…amazingly. What seems to be dead, whether a dream or a vision or perhaps even a relationship, may only be dormant. When God, as our Master Gardener, plants a root, we have only to nourish with faith and water it with patience, and what He has planned for that root will erupt. That’s the way we are made. I love how the Amplified Version puts it: “I [God] create the fruit of his lips, and I will heal him, make his lips blossom anew with speech in thankful praise.” (2) It’s all about timing—God’s, not mine.

And concerning those roots, I sense that I have some responsibility in acquiring and properly using that aforementioned knowledge. This includes working WITH my environment, and not against it. Compromise is not always a bad thing, and as a wise wit once penned: “Blessed are the flexible, for they shall bend and not break.” Jesus didn’t demand an air-conditioned conference hall and catered lunch for his hillside audience of 5000, but did just fine with rural setting and a few donated loaves and fishes. (3) I would say that also qualifies as pretty creative. And as much as I would love to have a full scale garden of blooming beauties, patience for the proper timing is part of the program. So many times I want what I want…NOW. How I thank my Lord for what I sometimes have regarded as a ball and chain, but has actually turned out to be a life-saving anchor! Granted, it can seem inconvenient and heavy at first, but the benefits are enormous.

And so I love spring all the more as remarkable rebirth occurs sometimes to my delighted surprise, but I also find an increased appreciation of winter—not just a season of death as so many have unkindly marked it, but a season of rest and rejuvenation. Such wisdom could only come from the mind of the Master Gardener, the One who planted the first garden, the One from whom I can learn as I dig about and get grass-stained in my own garden of life…if I will but make myself teachable.

–signing off for now—-dawnlizjones