Garden Gifts

                                                                 Garden Gifts
Dear Friends,
     My little cottage garden is filled with brilliant colors and fragrant scents floating in the heavy, humid heat of our midwest yard.
     Some of my plants are memory flowers, gifted to me from friends or relatives.  Each flower and herb gives its  own gifts as I walk through the towering sunflowers.  Each day is a treasure hunt.  The purple basil and curly parsley are hidden under the heavy tomato vines.  The Morning Glories are twining up those sunny towers, showing off their sparkling royalty in the early morning dewy mist.  The ancient, rough hewn wren houses are hidden in the heart shaped leaves and the wrens are singing their melodies from a hiding place in the tangle of clematis on the fence nearby.
     Plants can be memories, gift seeds of friendships, still growing and reseeding and being gifted time and again, making more memories and more treasure to be found among the branches and leafy vines, hiding places for wrens and beetles, treasures to be found. Garden gifts of songs, and blooms, earthy scents and  herbal sachets. Gifts from God.

Psalms 145: 1-3
" I will extol thee, my God, O King; I will bless thy name for ever and ever.
Every day will I bless thee; and I will praise thy name for ever and ever.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable."

Broken To Beautiful: A Garden Story

Dear Friends,

     Sometimes when I read something or see something and somehow it fits in with a Bible study I am doing, I am so amazed and thankful for the way that God draws me to Himself and teaches me over and over, more intricate details of the message that He wants me to learn.

    This week I read about and researched about a garden called The Butchart Gardens. The thing about this garden that jumped out to me is how it was originally a huge gaping hole left after the limestone was quarried out of the property. The sensitive, artistic wife of the quarry owner had a vision to create beauty from this eyesore, and thus started her immense project with a row of Poplar and Plum trees, and some Sweet Pea Flower seeds. It took many years of labor, but stands today, over 100 years later, as one of the top 10 gardens in the world, and is visited by nearly one million people every year. 
    From an empty, rocky hole  came a place where people can visit and return to their homes with a fragrant, enduring image of floral beauty.
Isaiah 51:1-3
"Hearken to Me, ye that follow after righteousness, that ye seek The Lord: look unto the Rock whence ye are hewn, and the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.  Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him and increased him.  For The Lord  shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places: and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of The Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and a voice of melody."

My Garden Fence

Dear Friends, 
My garden can be a sweet place of meditation including praise and thanksgiving, prayer and quiet listening.
Today He seemed to be speaking through the wild tangle of sweet pea vines and honey scented honeysuckle that are clambering up, over, and all around the old wire fence. The vines seem to be seeking and gaining freedom from the chains of the fence.
My prayer and heart cry has been for Saeed Abedini to be released from the prison that holds him captive in Iran  for his faith in Jesus.
Like my flowers bring beauty to the ugly chain link fence, Saeed brings the beauty of his faith and hope in Jesus to the other prisoners who are also in that ugly place of filth, disease, and torture.
One of the prisoners who has found new life in Jesus from Saeed's testimony, is said to say that he no longer feels imprisoned.
Isaiah 61:1
"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because The Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound"

Garden Letter

       

   

                           July 5, 2014
Dear Friends,
As I sit here this evening in my "Happy Room" which is the name given this room, by a good friend, I am looking out the window to my little cottage garden.  A gentle rain is nourishing and bathing the garden and the wrens are sleeping in the cozy bird house, after a hectic day of filling the mouths of their young.
As the garden is fed by the rain, we are able to be nourished by His Word.  The seed needs to be broken when life emerges, and that life breaks the earth to burst into bloom.  His Great Love can be like the rain to bring something beautiful out of the broken earthen vessels of our lives.
Isaiah 61: 11 says, "For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before  all the nations."