Tag: scripture

Preparation

I took advantage of our brief window of warm weather Saturday to prepare the garden for sugar snaps. These lovely plants grow too tall for the tomato cages. Laden with fruit, they bend and fall to the ground instead of reaching for the sun.

Once the peas are planted and the cages set over them, I can attach the strings to the cages and let the vines climb them. Of course, I may need the ladder to pick the fruit! Right now it looks like some weird decoration gone wrong.

I may need more strings when the plants are growing. It’s difficult to anticipate, even after having grown sugar snaps for years. There’s always an insecurity that I have done too little or wasted my time doing something not needed at all.

The pictures in the catalogue seduced me again and I ordered lavender plants for the front of my house. When Nick was alive to tend to the vegetables, I tended to the flowers in front of the house. Now that I am tending the vegetables, the flower garden has become rather drab. I may have overcommitted myself (again!), but I needed to order the sugar snap seeds and once I was on the site…  If you give a gardener a seed packet, they’re going to want a root ball.

There are steps that need to happen now in preparation for a garden that will be planted later. There is a garden that needs to be planted in order to have home grown vegetables and blooming flowers later.

A garden, like life, is not instantaneous. To be successful, you need to plan, and you need to prepare. This is a simple truth most of us understand. We learned it by taking tests in elementary school. We learned it on costume day and picture day.

Do we know this about our spiritual journey?

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom, Five of them were foolish and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with the lamps. Matthew 25:1-4.

The wise ones were prepared. They had brought flasks of oil with them. They had strung a trellis for the vines to climb. They had bought the seeds and plants. They had memorized the scriptures. They had learned to hear the still small voice of God.

Are you prepared to meet your maker? The question may make us smirk and roll our eyes, but the question is a real one. Are you? Are you prepared?

What does that even mean to you?

For me, it means that I am letting His Spirit review how I am spending my time. Am I reading the Word? Memorizing scripture? Learning His voice? If I sense the Spirit leading me to do something, am I doing it? Have I apologized to the people I know I have offended?

I can’t do this once. I must do it every day. Every day, I must spend time in prayer and let the Spirit guide me. Everyday I need to top off my oil reserves with some scripture. Everyday, I must visualize my garden growing and prepare for what it needs to thrive.

Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this, if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. Matthew 24:42-44.

Join me in taking advantage of today to prepare.

Love in Christ, Betsy

God Sparkles

The wet grass has frozen overnight and catches the morning sun like glistening jewels. Not the glare of sun reflecting off snow, not yet this winter, not this far south, just sparkling frost. I can’t capture it with the camera. But the sight holds me mesmerized for minutes.

Reflected sunlight. Just little bits of sun in behold-able sparkles. And isn’t God like that? Sometimes He is the glaring sun that makes us shade our eyes and look for a hiding place. But more often, I think, He reveals himself more gently. In the moisture left from the rain, in the chilly weather that allows the plants to rest, in the reflected light, in a sparkle the camera can’t quite catch.

I drink my coffee – beans from the earth, water from the skies. I look out my window – glass made from sand and rocks eroded by the weather. I snuggle into my sweater –an animal’s wooly fleece. I am protected in a house of bricks made from clay. My home is heated by gifts from God’s earth – gas, or coal, or water-generated power.

How accustomed I have become to all God’s gifts, how readily I take them for granted. How rarely I take the moment to thank God for them all.

In the moments I stand and watch, the warming sun steals the glittering frost. As if God’s appearance in this moment was for this moment only and not a thing to be captured and held onto. I want to build a tabernacle to this moment when I saw God in the sparkles in my yard. Perhaps that is what I am doing as I write this.

Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah” – not knowing what he said. Luke 9:33.

But it is not the sparkling grass that I need to admire. Not the sun or the rain, not the coffee beans, the glass, or the sheep’s wool. All these just point to the gracious provision of a loving God. Provision that is not based on my worthiness or even my gratitude, but on His love for me, for you, for all of us.

Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” Luke 9:35.

I turn from the window, refill my coffee cup, and head to the chair beside my Bible. Listen to Him. And isn’t that the real gift? That God gave us Himself in human form, spoke to us in a voice we could hear and understand? I turn to Matthew five and listen to Jesus’ words. Comforting, inspiring, challenging, words which call me know Him, to hear and do.

It’s a new year – 2025 – but these old words are still the ones worth listening to. Jesus’s voice is still the one God tells us to listen to. And His words still carry more life-changing wisdom than the millions of words written since then. I’m not a big resolution maker. God is in charge, and He may have other plans. But I can resolve to listen to God’s Son more. To hear and do.

Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. Matthew 7:24-25.

Listen to Him.

May God bring you blessings and joy in 2025. May you build your house on the rock and withstand the storms.

Love in Christ, Betsy