How does your garden grow?

I’m a gardener, and I love to tend my garden, but every season something in my garden just doesn’t behave.  Oh, and I guess I should confess I have a bit of a perfectionist streak in me as well... 

I was thinking about how my gardens are so much like life.  Just when you think you’ve got everything the way you’d like there are weeds, and if not weeds its sick or dying plants, or maybe a plant that gets too big for its place... And don’t get me started on storms...

I don’t know why I place unrealistic expectations on my garden... and even more why I place unrealistic expectations on life!

We’re not promised easy lives in this world, in fact we’re promised the opposite!!

John 16:33 - I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

John 15:18-20 - If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.

I love my imperfect garden, it gives me great joy - even if I do have to keep weeding & transplanting & trimming... This helped me to reflect on God’s work in our lives as believers, His work of sanctification.  He has to pull things out of our lives, transplant His ways into our hearts, and trim back the excess... all to get us to be the people He designed us to be... and it brings Him joy to work in our lives!

Philippians 1:6 - ...he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

(I hope you've enjoyed a stroll through my garden)