I am no gardener. A green thumb? Never had it. In fact, I’m probably as far away from a green thumb as one can possibly be. Just ask the neighbors. Although I make attempts at keeping the flower beds in decent shape, it doesn’t take long before the growth and dead to invade.
I have irises in my flower bed. They are absolutely beautiful when they bloom, but the leaves and stalks will quickly die once their blooming season is over. A good gardener would remove the leaves/stalks as they die. Yeah, I’m not a good gardener. Here’s a picture of one of the plants that was before me as winter became spring:
Not pretty, right? And that wasn’t the worse plant! It’s hard to believe that anything beautiful could come from that mess.
But underneath the dried out stalks and dead leaves, something was there. As I cut down the stalks and removed leaf and leaf, I noticed little shoots of green coming from the ground. Underneath the old, something new was being born.
Life is a lot like that sometimes, isn’t it? We find ourselves in situations where life seems dead and dried out. Nothing good or new can seem to come from them. And if we’ve been in the situations long enough, all that we see are those things that dead.
There are times when God calls the dead things back to life (Romans 4:17). Other times, God removes the leaves a little at a time to reveal something new. Scripture tells us: “And the one sitting on the throne said, ‘Look, I am making everything new!'” (Revelation 21:5).
To see the new, we have to look underneath the weeds. And to fully experience the new, the dead has to be removed. Sometimes God is the one who weeds out the dead in our lives through the circumstances and situations that are out of our control. Other times, He prompts us to make the cuts and remove the dead. Whichever situation you are facing, keep looking for the new…it’s there.
And when the new finally blooms….what a beautiful site it is!
(Not my irises/picture, but this is what they look like when blooming)
Authentic Hope 