I’m sitting on the patio off our kitchen as the sun rises in late August. My delightful lab drops the tennis ball taunting to me to play fetch. We will play, oh we will, many times throughout the day! First I need my coffee. I see Mt Adams in the distance with her snow-capped peak in the distance. We’ve had very few wildfires this summer in a place where wildfire smoke accompanies many summers. Its been refreshing. We have a few more days of summer break here in the Pacific Northwest before our kids go back to school. Rain has fallen several times the past week and has brought the heat of summer to a milder and more enjoyable temperature.
It has been a very northwest summer for our family! From Washington to Idaho for a youth camp, to Oregon to visit friends, to camping and hiking in northern California exploring the Redwood National Park, we have enjoyed the diversity of scenery. We even tried some boogie boarding in the ocean, the day after a tsunami warning which turned out to be a few added inches to the shallow waves where we were. At our campsite the night before, we decided to eat extra amounts of s’more bits and have a campfire read aloud because as my husband sang, “Its the end of the world as we know it!” In fact, there was word that the town near us was evacuating. One of our campsite neighbors had read that the Red Cross said you are safe if you’re at 150 ft above sea level, which we were at 160 ft! But as we fell asleep that night, I told the kids, half-joking, if water comes to our campsite, grab a tree and hold on!
Coming home is always a lot of work to get everything unloaded, washed and put away again, and to get the sand out of everyone’s belongings! We happily came home to a messy and torn up back yard. You wouldn’t naturally think that a yard dug up by an excavator would mean all is well, but it was, at long last.
Earlier this year, I was walking out in the back of our yard just to check on things. There was a spot in our septic tank drain field that was slowly flooding and we were putting off fixing it because its a large property and there is so many other things to maintain. As I walked around to the small flooded area, I noticed it was spreading and getting larger, and the black gooey substance on top of the grass looked increasingly toxic. We found out that our entire septic tank had failed. So we worked on preparing a plan to connect to the city sewer.
Before we left for our vacation time, the excavator began digging to lay the new pipe work, and completely smash up the old, concrete septic tank which was probably over 50 years old. After laying the pipes, he backfilled the area where he dug. Because he had to work in this area, we turned off the irrigation to that part of the grass and risked the health of our little cedar privacy border, and the grass understandably turned yellow. Bricks from the outdoor patio were removed so he could connect the pipes, and large rocks were unearthed in the process. Its a messy yard. You wouldn’t think that we’d be happy about such a beat up section of yard, but looking at it, we don’t focus on the mess, we know its fixed, and we see the potential for beauty.
Isn’t that how it is with God? When He comes in to excavate our hearts, there is a lot of demolition work to be done. He smashes idols… out of mercy. He tears up the old ways… out of mercy. He gives us a new heart to replace the broken unusable one that has been flooding our lives with sewage, and completely cleanses us. All mercy. Rocks appear out of nowhere and are scattered across the yard. A person saved by God’s grace is someone who is being excavated, or to put it in Biblical terms, sanctified. That process is often messy on the outside as God’s grace works in that person’s heart and then flows out to other areas of his or her life. Sanctification is a lifelong process, and slowly the beauty of God’s grace emerges and others can see what God has done from the inside.
When I looked at our yard after we got back from vacation, it was a beautiful mess! Beautiful because I know that deep underground, the problem was fixed. The old had gone and the new had come. But what to do about this mess? As I stared for many long minutes at a time, a plan came together in my mind. We would take all the bricks out of the ground and create a garden space… of course. So that is what we have been working on in early mornings before it gets too hot. We removed and stacked the patio bricks, then I laid down weed fabric, a brick border, and bark mulch where we will set 4 raised garden beds next summer. My project is still in the works. I’m only half way there, but its looking beautiful.
There’s no wind today, and the sun is up. I think I will finish this project soon. There will be more work to do like hand-picking all the large stones, setting the sprinkler in the large swaths of yellow grass, trying to save the little cedars from withering up in the heat. And then maintenance. But I see beauty.
Isn’t that also how God sees us? His salvation rescues us from sin and brokenness. His work is complete in our hearts even if we don’t see it. What does He see? He sees beauty. He sees what is to come, and He promises to do that work in our hearts and lives. He does the work, and gives the vision, and then sets out to complete what He has started in us.
“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
Do you see a difficult relationship in your life? Do you have before you an uncertain future or broken ways of thinking that result from fear? We all have brokenness in our lives that our Lord is working on. The heart problem has been solved, our sin has been covered by Christ’s blood if you have faith in Christ. The new pipes have been connected, buried in the soil of your heart. The excavation has been accomplished, and now the Gardener gets to create beauty from that. Imagine the gardens that God envisions in your life! Ask Him for that! He will create a place of beauty out of all that has been torn apart. I’ve seen it happen in my own life, over and over again. But more importantly, its what God says in His Word.
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Questions to ponder:
Have you responded in faith to the call of God in Christ Jesus to surrender your life to Him and accept His offer of free grace?
What areas of your life need excavating? Why not ask Him to show you those areas? A long time ago, I pictured in my mind the house of my heart. And I asked the Lord to go through the rooms of my heart and show me where change needs to happen. He will show you!
The answers to your deepest heart questions won’t come from a person, or reading a devotional, or a book, though those things can be wonderful. The answers to your deepest needs come from knowing God in His Word, and His Word is where your heart needs to dwell. Find a Bible reading schedule to keep yourself immersed in His Word, and begin today!
In my garden, I imagine dahlias and lavender nestled into the corners of my raised beds, attracting the pollinators to do their mighty work. I imagine a wooden garden bench to sit down on and watch the sunset on summer evenings. I imagine our little struggling cherry tree, finally thriving and providing shade, green grass, and butterflies. I imagine the beautiful work of the Faithful Gardener who makes all things beautiful in His time.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
