NEW LIFE!!

Now if you know me and my typing style, you will know that I am not necessarily the biggest fan of using caps. However, there are times when it is highly prudent. This is one of those times.

I get so excited this time of year, what with the promise of new life--it's everywhere: in the trees, on the ground, under the ground... When a brand new little seedling emerges, the smell of the freshly broken soil captures every neuron within my brain and sends them soaring to a happy place. I can't imagine a world without new life. This is for sure, the number one reason I can think of, to let winter remain one of the four seasons... Because after it is all said and done, the last snowflake has fallen, the last wintery, icy blast has blown, spring gets to dance its way into our lives once more with the promise of NEW LIFE.

And that makes me happy. That brings me joy. I sit here, in my dining room/make-shift computer desk area, inhaling the euphoric aroma of freshly broken soil, smiling like a cheshire cat. It is March. And that means that our dining room/make-shift computer desk area is now also our greenhouse staging area. I seeded about 10 different little types of miracles on Saturday, including Basil, which has always proven to be the earliest riser. No wonder we get along. I, too, love to be the first one up.

Well, I just looked under the hood of my flat, full of what looks like a bunch of brown dirt to the novice onlooker, and began to see green. More than a dozen little Basil seedlings* have already emerged in their little tray, to enjoy the peaceful quiet of their own kind of morning. The seeds are waking up, and as sure as I sit here and type, my eyes are stinging with tears of joy.

Call me strange. Call me sappy. Just know this: if you know me, you'll be calling me when it's time for Pesto. (*The first photo is the actual first day breakthrough. The second photo was added 1 day later for a better visual.)

I think about this new life and the blessing it is to our family... Healthy food, grown honestly and with the care of the one who chose it and bought it when it was yet a seed. An inactive hard little nothing, but under the right nurturing, could feed a family... Of course I am not going to let this one get by. In John 15:1, Jesus says, "I am the true grapevine and my Father is the gardener." I think about how God actually did choose me, and how He did purchase me with His son's blood, and how it doesn't stop there. I think about how when I buy seeds, I know the full potential that is held in each miniscule seed, and I also know what it takes to make it grow, and to make it produce as much fruit as possible.

What an amazing picture we are given by this seemingly mundane example of a garden. Something so rugged, so basic, so rustic, and yet so beautiful and teeming with life! Life that doesn't live for the sake of living, but life that is born to nourish others. To give of itself so completely that at the end of its season, the only thing you can do is uproot it and make room for a new one next year, that is the mark of a successful plant. We all have fruit to bear in our lives, and it is not for our own sakes. We all are grown by the Gardener Himself, and our purpose is to nourish others. But we also have an even greater purpose: to glorify the One who made us. That's why He made us all so unique and beautiful.

Just as I carefully chose my seeds, planted them in some earth, watered and waited expectantly, God is waiting expectantly for each of us, His children, to break through the soil and emerge as the hand-picked miracles that we are. It's time... Are you waking up?