He Makes Beautiful Things

"A farmer went out to sow his seed.  

As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 

Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.  But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.  

Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.  

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown."  ~Jesus

Does your heart ever feel like this?  

Mine does.

It's what most of the ground around here looks like too.  But yesterday morning when I woke up, it was raining... just a slow, gentle rain.  You could almost hear the ground sighing in relief.

Then we looked out the window at our garden, and saw this:

and this:

Look at that little bean still hangin' on! :)

We were so excited!  I love fresh-from-the-garden green beans.

Then we went to our Sunday gathering at Cornerstone.  One of the songs we sang was about letting God's mercy rain on us.  I can't remember the song - it was new to me, but the words washed over me like the rain I could hear hitting the roof as we worshipped.  

What I could picture was the dry cracked ground around our house, the dry, wrinkly beans Brian had just recently stuck into that dry ground.  I thought about the work he'd done to soften the soil, to remove the weeds, to allow the nourishing water the reach down in there.  And the new growth that we had just seen that morning.

That bean did not work for that growth.  It rested in the soil, and let the water, the sun and the nutrients from the soil to do their job.  

I thought of Jesus' story about the sower and the seed.  One of my favorites of Jesus' stories.  I thought of how many times I fret and worry about where I am, how I'm doing, where I'm going.  If I could just prepare my heart to hear, weed out the junk that gets in the way, and receive the rain as it falls, the growth would just happen.

And it would be beautiful.

Brian's tobasco peppers.  Aren't they beautiful?

You Make Beautiful Things

Beautiful song here ^^^^  Give it a listen. :)