What a difference six days make! I was away from home for six days and came back to a Spring garden! Yes, by Easter Sunday Spring was beginning to bloom. But as I pulled into my drive just a week later, I almost didn’t recognize my front garden. Peony grew by a foot (not kidding!) and already two blooms! The fledgling maple leafed-out. Foxy Foxtrot tulips continued to delight but now bear a fresh coloring of red mixed with pale yellow. And my from-childhood favorites – bleeding hearts and lilacs – are showing themselves in all their glory!
I am a haphazard gardener at best, a negligent gardener most often. But in these Spring weeks when I haven’t yet had a chance to forget to water or trim or weed, there is a simple fresh and ever-changing simple beauty to it that delights me completely.
I wonder if you would agree with me that our Spring garden changes make our wet gray winter memories fade away. Maybe we should put a note in our calendars next November to begin thanking the Lord for the Spring that will come, it always has and it always will. Because it is not dependent on us, it is dependent on God, His perfect science of Creation, and His unchangingness while everything else is changeable.
A recent devotional reading focused on God’s immutability, His unchanging nature. The God who spoke Creation into being is the same God who caused the Red Sea made into a path for the people of Israel to cross over from Egypt. He is the same God who met Hannah in her sorrow over her barrenness and fulfilled her prayer to bear a son.
He is God the Father who sent His only Son to rescue us from slavery to sin … “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” John 3.16-17
We each are changeable and I, for one, want change according to God’s will for me. I remember many years ago hearing one of the beloved women of our church pray that God “would change us, not leave us as we are today.” What a powerful prayer of submission and confidence in the Lord!
There is no better way to seek change according to God’s will than to spend time with the Lord in His Word and with His people. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday … every day is a good day for you to ask the Lord to change your thinking, your words, your heart. Because the One who knows you best has delight and peace and assurance for you, when you seek Him with your whole heart.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will hear you. You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the LORD.” Jeremiah 29.11-13
Happy Spring! Love, Colleen