thoughts from the garden

Just like a flower newly brought from the nursery, we reach moments in our lives when we become rootbound.

We have set out roots within a comfortable place of containment and achieved good growth, perhaps even put on some blossoms that have become a thing of beauty for the beholder's eye.

Then suddenly, the day comes when our daily watering is not enough.

We are no longer satisfied by the nutrients within. We begin longing for a deeper breath, a longer drink.

Yet the new soil bed is a place unknown.

We will be subject to the elements that, until now, have been outside of the greenhouse walls.

There is a temptation to remain where it is familiar, safe and warm. But somewhere deep down, we know what the Gardener has intended.

We know it is time to take the risk in a bigger plot of soil, a place where our tangled roots can come undone in the new ground.

Then we set our eyes on the hope set before us, the hope that, risk taken, the beauty of our maturity will bless the One who called us forth from the beginning as a living seed.