Springtime Reflections

This is an exciting time of year - there is a sense of "new beginings" in the air. The sun is rising earlier and staying around to brighten our world a bit longer in the evenings. Oh, the wonderful way it feels! We walk with more of a bounce in our steps, we may even find ourselves humming a little more than usual, and with a lot of us, our thoughts are turned towards seed catalogs and planning gardens of flowers and/or vegetables.

I'd like to take a few moments to reflect on another - even more important - garden that needs to be sown, watered, fed, nurtured and pruned. The garden of our hearts!

We take such care of our flowers. Of our vegetable gardens, our rose bushes, apple trees, even the wild flowers that come up. We cut them back with tenderness, knowing that they'll come back stronger than ever bearing their fruit or blossoms fuller and better. Do we do the same with our souls? Are we allowing the Lord to "prune" us? Or, when He starts to "prune" do we start complaing about how could God allow this or that to happen in our lives? and start wondering what we've done wrong? Do we try to get away from what ever it is that is causing us pain, or try to shut it out, hoping it will go away?

Let me, instead, suggest this - try to embrace it with open arms - run toward the pain fully knowing that God is doing a work in your life and that you, too, like the plants you care for, will start to bloom on the other side of the "pruning". You will be better, brighter, stronger - a maturing child of the King!

- - - Just some "food for thought" - - -

(c)kle

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