When Luke was in kindergarten, he had the most wonderful teacher's assistant. She told Luke her favorite flower was Lupine, and he wanted to try to plant some. We mentioned it to our neighbor across the street, who had some lupine growing, and that Fall, he gave us some seeds from that plant. We held on to them until the next Spring, and then planted them in a big pot, so that we could nurture the seedling, watch its progress, and not lose track of it in our big bed of mostly weeds. The plan was to eventually transfer the plant, once it grew strong enough, into the larger bed. It never got strong or big. We had saved some of the seeds, so the next year, we did the same thing, and had about the same experience, though I did go ahead and transfer the tiny thing, thinking maybe the pot just wasn't a happy place. Alas, we never got any lupine, and I added it to my list of many plant failures. That was 5 or 6 years ago. Luke just finished 8th grade.
So years later, lupine experiments long forgotten, look at what happened this Spring. Do you see that picture? That is LUPINE! It's growing up in our weedy bed, it's big, and flowering, which means it'll be making seeds for more lupine next year. It did this with no help or nurturing from us.
I blog for a few reasons:
⋄I want to record sightings of God's activity in my life, and share these with others.
⋄When I'm looking for God's activity, I'm more likely to see it, and so around and round we go.
⋄It gives me a bit of discipline in my writing ways.
I see God's activity in this lupine. It's amazing. I'm sharing it on this blog, and you can "make of it what you will."
I'm going back to James, who wrote, "Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way." (James 1:2-4 The Message) I am in a difficult season, there are tests and challenges, and my first instinct is not to see it as a gift. But the growth IS happening. Our surprise lupine is proof! Of course, we always get weeds that grow mightily without our care, we know all plants don't need attention to grow. But I want to be growing the good stuff in my heart. Here is something in the plant world that I started long ago, but gave up and forgot all about. So is there something like that in me? God can do the nurturing and tending, and bring up something beautiful and fruitful. That is the gift.
