I have so enjoyed the weather and sitting on my porch lately, looking at my flowers and enjoying the birds and butterflies. I feel like I am finally starting to come to understand how to help my garden thrive.  It hasn’t always been this way! When I first arrived in Virginia everything was SO GREEN! I couldn’t wait to get some flowers planted. We were farther away from everything than I was used to, so I did some online shopping and ordered plants that came with a map for proper spacing, etc. I picked all my favorite colors and made sure they would do well in partial shade since my new home faced north. We got everything into the ground and enjoyed some pretty foliage and quite a few flowers that summer, considering it was the first year for all of it.  The first frost in late October was a hard hit for me, but I was assured by friends at church that this was normal. Everything would come back in the spring. 

Imagine my surprise and dismay when only half of what I had planted came up again. The other half dissolved into brown mush over the winter, never to be resurrected. I was crushed! In SoCal, if you plant it and water it, it grows – that’s all there is to it! It is not like that here and I had not done my due diligence before I put those poor plants in the ground. I didn’t read labels to find out if my new plants were annual or perennial in my new planting zone. (In Cali everything is perennial, from ice plant to poppies to giant sequoias.) I hadn’t prepared the ground before or after planting – no fertilizer, no compost, no mulch. Nothing that would help my needy plants thrive in the red clay we call soil here or survive the frigid temps that flip flop with more moderate numbers every winter. Those poor things

never had a chance!

I think we do the same thing with our spiritual lives. We stay busy all week – working, parenting, grandparenting, schooling, shopping, cooking, driving, cleaning and sleeping (maybe?). Sunday morning arrives and we roll into church as the clock strikes 10 a.m., after a stressful morning trying to get everyone fed, dressed, and deposited in their respective classrooms, and we wonder why we’re having a hard time worshipping. Our adrenalin is still pumping and we’re fidgety; our attention is easily drawn to anything in the room except the Spirit of God; we’re unable to focus during the prayers being offered or the songs being sung. We finally calm down and gather our wits together just about the time the pastor steps into the pulpit, and the rest of the service is spent either agreeing or disagreeing with what he is saying, or possibly planning what needs to get done between church and that big Sunday dinner. 

With preparation like that, why are we surprised when we feel disconnected and cold during the worship service? We should expect to feel that way since we have had no daily feeding on the Word of God, no thirst-quenching conversations with our Father in prayer, no discipleship from small group discussion about spiritual things…nothing that would keep a flickering flame alive in the spiritual desert we live in. 

We’ll talk more about this next week. See you on Sunday!

    Careen