Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God.                                                                                                    –Blaise Pascal

August 1998

The travel agent reached out and handed us one ticket to Spain—for my daughter.  In August she will take off to realize a dream I had once held over thirty years ago.

I watch her now and remember those intense longings to see the world.  I wanted the excitement of exotic foods and learning new ways to say, “Good morning.”

Instead, I fell in love.  We bought a home.  Children came along.  And pangs of jealousy pricked my heart whenever a friend left for Japan or Russia while I remained “stuck” at home.

Then, five years ago, my parents, in order, were stricken with cancer, and I discovered the treasures of our years lived in our home town.

My Dad had taught our son to fish; Mother taught our daughter to relax.  Every Christmas, Grandpa had cooked waffles after we opened our packages.  My husband worked alongside my father building a porch and chopping firewood for the family mountain cabin.  Best of all, because we lived in town, both Dad and Mother lived the fullness of their lives until death, at home. 

God’s wisdom has made our home rich in the blessings of family.  He knew this was the greater good, better than seeing the Eiffel Tower.  His wisdom also guides my daughter’s dream to live in Spain.  Letting go, and leaning on His wisdom, we each have the opportunity to bloom where we are planted.

Scripture: There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven….I have seen the burden God has laid on men.  He has made everything beautiful in its time.                          [Ecclesiastes 3:1, 10-11]

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Meditations:  In the Garden
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Copyright 2017.  All Rights Reserved.

Quote:  Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it.  Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light….If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.                                                             –Feodor Dostoevski

I would kill for one gardenia bloom, a buttery white flower under my nose, full of sweet scent.  We planted a gardenia bush.  Of course.

We then took immediate steps to make sure it would survive searing summer temperatures in the dry Arizona desert.  Workers installed a vast system of thin water tubing connected to an automatic timer, this programmed to give exactly 18 minutes of water to the gardenia at 3:00 a.m. while we slept.

For years, I was a gardener without responsibility.  I plucked gardenia blossoms at dawn and retreated inside, far from suffocating heat.  So it was a shock, on a first summer day this year, when I found my beloved gardenia bush limp and quietly dying.  Our watering system had crashed.

Alarmed, I grabbed the hose.  I sprayed.  I filled the well around the bush with water. Each morning thereafter, I sprayed water and studied my bush.  I watched buds mature, predicting which ones would bloom tomorrow.  I caught the first signs of yellowing leaves and applied fertilizer.  I plucked off faded blooms, allowing the gardenia bush to direct energy to new leaves and buds.  And I understood the hurt of thoughtlessness, a day without water because the gardener forgot.

With surprise, I’ve learned to treasure the daily responsibility of caring for the gardenia bush that takes care of me.  We don’t plan to fix the automatic water system.  My love of a gardenia flower is so much stronger now because of my love for its bush.  

He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees.  When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near.  Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.  [Luke 21:29-31]

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Meditations:  In the Garden
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Copyright 2017.  All Rights Reserved.

And when the men of that place recognized Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to him and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed.  [Mat 14:35-36]

I put on my pink plastic garden shoes and headed for regular morning garden inspection.  Down the steps, turning right on the gravel path just after the lavender,  the bright blue sky made me glance upward just as my right foot stepped forward and immediately sank. 

Shocked, I pulled up on my foot.  The mud pulled and sucked as my shoe came free, leaving a three inch deep outline.  Immediately, I knew what had to be done.

Taking one giant step over the problem area I headed toward the tool shed, returning with a shovel and plastic box of repair pieces.  I scraped the orange gravel to the side of the path and began digging gently around the foot print.   Lifting the mud onto bare dirt, I continued probing with the tip of the shovel down into the slimy mess.  Two more gentle pushes, and I met pay dirt.  A firm resistance told me to pull back the large shovel and use the hand trowel to dig further down into the mud.

I dropped to my knees and began to lift the wet mud out of the growing hole.  Closer to the ground, I could see the large area of dirt that had been absorbing water throughout the week from a leak somewhere underground in our precious drip system.  Scoop by scoop, silt and slime accumulated onto a pile by my side.

I tried to imagine the leak in the blue irrigation tubing that had caused such a mess.  My knees were soaking wet, and every time I lifted out a scoop of mud, a tiny oozing landslide filled the hole again.  Eventually, the hole growing wider, I reached moist dirt that held firm banks, and I was able to dig more forcefully toward the nasty leak.

As I exposed the tube and wiped the mud off, I looked for the clean water drip that marked the exact spot for repair.  There it was.  A prick, a pin hole, a speck of a hole letting one drop at a time squeeze out.  One drip after another, the water had saturated three feet of pathway, softening the dirt and making a hidden trap for me on my morning walk.

On my knees, my thoughts turned to Jesus as He preached in the desert.  How his words must have offered such refreshment to parched souls.  How tiny his words must have seemed at first, like the small drips coming from the blue tube.  But how powerful they were!  They came without end, one after the other, softening the soil of human existence, spreading out over the landscape, ready to pull passing people into God’s inner circle of love.

Water Power in my garden showed me the tremendous strength of God’s Love Power.  It is ever so quiet, but drop by drop, it softens our hearts and offers the life-saving drink of salvation.

PRAYER:  Let me drink in the cool refreshment of God’s Word each day.

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Meditations:  In the Garden
TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Copyright 2013.  All Rights Reserved.