Hello SPV Family,
This is Grace, These days, I suppose I’m learning to be a farmer. I am greeted each morning with the scent of lemon blossoms from the two lemon trees at our front door. My husband graciously built shelves throughout our home to house many a vining plants and flowers; leaves and luscious green seems to spill from every corner of our little condo. We planted watermelon in our back planter bed, and herbs in our kitchen window, and have dreams of adding more to our quaint little sun porch. My home has quickly transformed into quite a garden. The Lord blessed me with many seeds in 2021: seeds of buying my first home, of getting married, of leaving jobs to start small businesses- seeds planted with immense hope and intention. Yet in the New Year, I feel often as though I’ve been forgotten, as if the ground has been covered, the harvest has already faded. The God who brought so much and gave so much for us, who moved mountains and made the stars align to bring so much together for us, has been quiet. “Be patient,” I hear Him whisper. “Allow the roots to grow.” He says. “Settle in.” And if I’m honest, I don’t want to be patient. The reality of a patient life, of listening with a servant heart, is often embracing the mundane moments of where I’ve been placed. I crave nothing of the slow and steady and sustainable growth that the Bible encourages. I don’t want to tend to the garden I’ve been led to plant. I don’t want to prune the weeds, to drive away the pests, to cover the beds in the frost and irrigate them in the drought. I want to dig these crops up now, and in my hurry, my unwillingness to embrace the tortoise and not the hare, I face the ugliest parts of myself. I find that I am not a wife who encourages, but a wife who berates. I am not a teacher who encourages, but a teacher who nitpicks. I am not a manager who collaborates, but a tyrant unwilling to share. I am not a grower who waits patiently for the harvest; I’ve already dismissed my tender and hopeful seeds as a tiny and worthless impossibility. I continue to try to smother the Lord’s gift of patience that He urges me to tend to. The Lord continually calls us to be patient, and if I truly operate in love, I take the time to give thanks for the abundance rather than tap my foot in anxious anticipation of what comes next. The harvest will come in it’s time; Paul reminds us Galatians 6:9 that we must “not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” In the patient mornings and evenings of tending the seeds- the mundane pruning and weeding, watering, waiting- there is where the true gift, the hope of what tomorrow will bring, is found. Here’s to tending the garden together; I pray that as I tend to these new seeds, that the Lord continues to grow His abundant work of patience in me. Much love and growth, Grace Chris Cahall [email protected] |
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