Spring is my favorite season. I love everything about it. I’ll have to say that this spring is obviously riddled with some huge challenges but God has not left His throne, and His message through the changing of the seasons permeates beyond the trials of man. The brilliance and perfection of God’s greatest object lesson comes as new life unfolds in the spring; lush fruit is produced abundantly in summer; harvest and preparation for rest and death come in fall; and rest and root growth happen in winter. Each season is designed to add upon the previous one and release to the next. His glory unfolds each day.

Perhaps my extra affection toward spring has to do with planting seeds and waiting joyfully for the growth to come. As I prepare the soil, plant the seed, water, and yes, even sing to my little children, God teaches me and talks with me about what is happening in that ground. He also teaches me about what the fertile soil of my life currently looks like and where He is carefully removing old growth, planting seeds of new life, and yes, singing over me. Before I move on, don’t pass over those last words too quickly. Sit with the knowledge for a minute that the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and all His heavenly host sing over your life. You are that valuable! Victory chants, lullabies, battle hymns, love songs. My heart could explode at the thought of it…..almost too wonderful, isn’t it? Yet that is my truth and it is yours as well.

Well, I digress! But it was a lovely squirrel to chase, right?

The picture above is one I took just this morning. Those are my tomato babies and in the next season they will start to produce fruit. They aren’t ready yet. They are tender and fragile and need a lot of nurturing to mature before they can be planted in the hard ground of the world. They have only been above the soil for about a week. Perhaps at first glance you might think they aren’t particularly healthy because they aren’t standing straight and tall. Not true at all. They were created with great care by our Father with a deep knowing that they need the light and will lean the correct way to get what they most need to survive. When I put the box back into the greenhouse after the picture, I put them in backwards so they would be leaning toward the dark. When I go back this afternoon I know those little babies will have leaned again towards the light. They just know.

The Master Gardener continues to teach. Proverbs 3: 5-6 NIV, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” That is not an obscure passage of Scripture. Many of you probably know it or even memorized it at some point. Sometimes the passages we know well become commonplace to us and because they are familiar we might have a tendency to think we have gotten all the knowledge out of them. The glory in His Holy Word is that they will always have more meaning and always take us to a deeper level of understanding. There is always more with God!

Today I see in that passage that He is talking about the heart – that place within us that is the center of who we really are. In that first phrase we are told to trust Him with all of who we really are (yep, that includes all of that stuff that no one except you knows about you) and not lean towards our own understanding of all of who we really are. Hmmm, I think what God is telling us here, through His servant Solomon, is that He knows us so much better than we know ourselves. He made us and has always loved us and always sung over us. If we want straight paths (and who is really going to wish for the broken or windy road) we just have to lean in to His truth. In other words, who He says I am is a lot more reliable than who I say I am or who others say I am.

My little baby plants know that they need to lean into the light if they want to grow. Can we, will we, know that we know that we know that we need to lean hard into the truth of who He says we are? Eventually He is going to need to plant us in the soil of the world to bring forth His goodness for others to see and we have to know it deep inside our hearts that only the Light of His truth will bring life.

Although this time of quarantine and isolation is hard and tedious, let’s not waste it. We are in little pots and have an opportunity to lean into, and look to, the One who will make our paths straight. I’m leaning hard! I hope you will too!