Just got done watering my flowers. Most of them are not looking exactly like they did a month ago. They are still very much alive, but they don’t have as many beautiful blooms as they did at the end of spring.
Part of it is the hot summer. Part of it might be their placement – they need a little less sun and a little more shade.
I found myself a little sad and disappointed. As if somehow I’ve failed though I go out and baby them every day with water and picking off the dead stuff so the living parts can thrive. But I can’t make them bloom if they don’t want to.
Then it hit me. They are ANNUALS! They aren’t supposed to be in bloom year round. They have a season of beauty and fullness and life. And try as I might to extend their season, their annual-ness will win out every time. I will have to eventually dig them up and plant new ones next year. No one wants to look at dead flowers.
Even my PERENNIALS have a season. Though their blooms will come back year after year, they will go through a season of “hibernation” as they wait for the right time to be in full bloom again.
Hmmmmmm….doesn’t that apply in other areas of life, too? Things that I invest my time and energy into? Opportunities that I get to enjoy? People that I have poured my life into? Ministry? I can do all the right things – planting, watering, nurturing – but the organic growth is not in my hands. Things that have always been good and vibrant and abundant may go through a season of hibernation and come back more fully than ever at a later time. Or maybe those things have been pulled out completely to be replaced with something new to grow in the next season.
I need to learn to listen to the Master Gardener. He understands the seasons of the things in my life. I don’t want to be spending my energy trying to get something to bloom that wasn’t meant to right now. I will keep watering the little “garden” He’s given me to tend right now. I will do my best to keep it clear of “weeds” and “dead stuff”. But I will also be willing to let things rest that will be back in another season or let Him pull up the things whose season is over to make room for the new seedlings He wants to plant.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, 11 – There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:…a time to plant and a time to uproot…He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
1 Corinthians 3:6-7 – I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
