Underground

...this reflection is from the Church of Our Saviour Youth Community's Weekly Update, I write a reflection each week for our community, a sweet friend thought it may be smart for me to publish them here.  Smart friends, it's good to keep them around...


Two weeks ago on my time off  I took a day to plant late spring and summer bulbs and bushes in our front yard. I wrote a few weeks ago about how I never got around to my grand plan of white tulips, well this was my second chance.  I spent an entire day with my hands deep in soil and my knees against the cold earth.

I learned quickly that a bulb planter is the best gardening tool invented and why people who garden are, no joke, amazing.  After pruning back unruly bushes, turning up the soil, and planing close to 100 bulbs and bushes I stood back to admire my work.  It looked like one big bare front garden.  

Then it started to rain.

Thankfully it has been raining steadily for the past two weeks so I know those deep planted beauties are being fed but my front yard still looks bleak.  I know that there is something happening beneath the surface but I can't see it, I know that soon there will be peony bushes and colorful flowers and green leaves but at the moment  it's all dirt.  Wet dirt.  

Does your life ever feel like my front yard?  You know that something is growing but you just can't see it popping above the surface.  The rain keeps coming, the storms blow through, and you know God is preparing something beautiful but it hasn't broken ground yet and you are left with nothing but the hope that the good thing is on it's way?

My plants are growing but for now it is all happening below the surface, beneath the soil, where only God can see.  God knows our hearts and sees the good things that are growing in us even before they become visible. 

These rains and storms we endure can be used to grow good things.  God can take even the worst that we walk through and transform it into something beautiful in us.