” Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT
A strange thing happened this year….my plants all started growing. I’m a recovering plant assassin, and over time I’ve learned a thing or two about the life-giving power of having some greenery strategically placed around them home. I kept trying, kept researching, and by the grace of God, I sprouted a lil green thumb. My journey with plants had run the gamut: some of them have had new sprigs here and there, others have wilted and died a slow horticultural death. But one thing that remained prevalent in my thoughts was feeling the awe that as these plants sat around my house year round….they just seemed to know what to do when the time was right. No muscling up. No coaxing. Very organic, very demure….and voila! Before you fully knew it, new life!
It got me thinking about how we treat similar things in our life. There’s growth, life, and work happening right in front of our very eyes, only to discover that like many things….good things take time, but sooner or later they will grow.
It’s interesting to me how we often approach gratitude in a similar way. Sometimes we wait to see the blessing materialize, the growth we’ve waited for or the breakthrough that we thought we would see and then decide to dust off the gratitude journal, or bring it up the next time praises go around with our small group. While I get it, one lesson I think would be worth extrapolating from our green friends, would be this: We can wait for the jackpot at the end of the journey, or we can be grateful as the journey progresses. Anything and everything can be worth celebrating and giving God gratitude for, if we look for the blessings right in front of us. Sunshine. Water. Rich soil. Fertilizer happens, and yet it causes plants to grow exponentially. Yes, it’s easy to celebrate the growth we can see, but what about everything that goes on behind the scenes in order to make the unseen, seen? There’s a plethora of blessing right in front of us daily if we will train our eyes to see the inner workings of how God is moving. Gratitude can make the disciplines of the daily less cumbersome. Getting up to spend time with Jesus? That grows your faith. Choosing what is right over giving in to temptation? That grows your faith. Giving thanks for the blessings right in front of you? That grows your faith. In every season, we can choose to be grateful for the growth we do and do not see, knowing the goodness and kindness of God is at work. And that is always worth celebrating and being grateful for.
So much love,
Joy