Yer Gettin' Up!

Good and soggy Friday morning! Today, the forces of the world conspired to get me up whether I needed it or not. The city front-end loader arrived before six to scoop the mud into the alley and the siding crew began working on the house directly behind mine just after that. We got drenched again last night. The struggling little tree in my backyard seems to sit right in the main flow channel for the runoff too. Kind of explains why the thing cannot get growing like it should. Does it feel like you are trying to sleep while the world is trying to get you up? Maybe it's worse than that. You feel as though your growing place is right in the flood channel. Why didn't God plant me in a calmer area that is free from the inundations that seem to come every day or week?

One thing I know is that God is a better planter than I am. God wouldn't plant a little tree in a place where the soil is washed away from the roots a couple times each year. God's plantings come with God's wisdom. If it seems to us that our roots are being washed away, we are not seeing what God sees. The currents of the world may feel to us like they are constantly flooding us out of growing where we are planted. Or, we feel like God planted us in the desert and we haven't seen water forever. Nothing seems just right in this world. Our growth seems too slow, the currents of the world too fast, and the saving grace of our great Planter can sometimes seem far away.

We do our best to grow where God has planted us, but our best is never good enough. If a strawberry plant quit sending out runners to make new plants or stopped producing any fruit at all, we might yank the thing up and throw it away. But, what would happen if the little plant got all confused and decided that it was the gardener? We come out one morning to find little strawberry runners uprooting the peas and planting asparagus. How dreadful can it get?! We sometimes get confused as to who is the plant and who is the gardener too. God plants us, grows us, and prunes us. The pruning bit hurts and the planting may seem to be in the wrong place, but we learn to trust in the wisdom of God the Gardener. If we don't, we end up with asparagus, and that is just too horrible to contemplate.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Bucky