Planting Flowers Before I Go
This is my first spring in my apartment after selling my house last fall to free me to go to Saipan. I didn’t originally plan to go until summer of 2020, after my college graduation, but the opportunity came up for this summer, so I applied and got the position. The apartment is ground floor with a patio and two small garden patches out front. I kept expecting management to plant something, but here it is well into June and nothing. I debated. Should I put in a few flowers? It doesn’t really seem reasonable seeing I will be gone most of the summer. Why put money into something I won’t be here to enjoy?
I did it anyway. I put marigolds and solar fairy lights in the round bed straight out from my patio door, and three little pink Calibrachoa clumps in the side bed, with Zinnia seeds sown into the dirt right behind them. Butterflies will love them if the bunnies don't eat them. Come fall, when I return home, it will be beautiful.
Anticipation of what I will see when I return is what prompted me to plant flowers this week. I seeded a memory in advance, a reminder of Davenport's beauty to help me reintegrate, should I find it hard to leave Saipan.
This reminds me of "grace", a Christian word that is hard to define. Because Larry and I moved so often in his career, I entered into the life of several different churches. Methodist, Presbyterian, Alliance, Evangelical Free, Baptist, but mostly Nazarene. Most of these cousins in the family of God have a tough time explaining grace. A little different spin in each church family.
Grace as unmerited favor. Grace as courtesy or goodwill. Grace as the love and mercy God gives us simply because he wants to.
These are correct, but hard to wrap your head around. At least for me. For me, sometimes I have to put things into my own words for it to makes sense.
For me, grace is like planting flowers in a place you plan to return to. Like a memory marker of my enjoyment living in this apartment. God did the same thing in the early days of humanity when he had to let us go for our own good. When sin fractured the world due to Adam and Eve's choice not to obey God, God had to put a separation between himself and humanity so that his holiness would not destroy us on contact the way light destroys darkness.
But he left behind a memory of himself within the soul of humankind. He left behind a memory marker of his extreme pleasure when he created humans and call us very good. He uses that memory to draw us to himself. No matter what you have done, and all of us have sinned, God still wants you. He is yearning toward you. And he planted within us the memory of himself causing us to yearn toward him in response. That's grace.
We are morally responsible, yes. God gave us the choice to follow him or not, yes. But never forget, God wants you! And he has planted flowers in the garden of your troubled heart to prove it.
Delta App says 2 days, 15 hours to flight check-in.
Eeeep...
Amy
I did it anyway. I put marigolds and solar fairy lights in the round bed straight out from my patio door, and three little pink Calibrachoa clumps in the side bed, with Zinnia seeds sown into the dirt right behind them. Butterflies will love them if the bunnies don't eat them. Come fall, when I return home, it will be beautiful.
Anticipation of what I will see when I return is what prompted me to plant flowers this week. I seeded a memory in advance, a reminder of Davenport's beauty to help me reintegrate, should I find it hard to leave Saipan.
This reminds me of "grace", a Christian word that is hard to define. Because Larry and I moved so often in his career, I entered into the life of several different churches. Methodist, Presbyterian, Alliance, Evangelical Free, Baptist, but mostly Nazarene. Most of these cousins in the family of God have a tough time explaining grace. A little different spin in each church family.
Grace as unmerited favor. Grace as courtesy or goodwill. Grace as the love and mercy God gives us simply because he wants to.
These are correct, but hard to wrap your head around. At least for me. For me, sometimes I have to put things into my own words for it to makes sense.
For me, grace is like planting flowers in a place you plan to return to. Like a memory marker of my enjoyment living in this apartment. God did the same thing in the early days of humanity when he had to let us go for our own good. When sin fractured the world due to Adam and Eve's choice not to obey God, God had to put a separation between himself and humanity so that his holiness would not destroy us on contact the way light destroys darkness.
But he left behind a memory of himself within the soul of humankind. He left behind a memory marker of his extreme pleasure when he created humans and call us very good. He uses that memory to draw us to himself. No matter what you have done, and all of us have sinned, God still wants you. He is yearning toward you. And he planted within us the memory of himself causing us to yearn toward him in response. That's grace.
We are morally responsible, yes. God gave us the choice to follow him or not, yes. But never forget, God wants you! And he has planted flowers in the garden of your troubled heart to prove it.
Delta App says 2 days, 15 hours to flight check-in.
Eeeep...
Amy
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