Sometimes God sows light in darkness; sometimes he plants joy in sadness.
Sometimes God is just beginning his foray into an area of our lives. His work isn’t always instantaneous. Sometimes as he has prepared the soil and has begun the watering and cultivating process, he plants a seed.
My wife began this thought in my mind a few evenings ago from the following text that she had read earlier in the day.
- Psalm 97:11-12 (NASB)
Light is sown like seed for the righteous And gladness for the upright in heart. [12] Be glad in the LORD, you righteous ones, And give thanks to His holy name.
Sometimes we have an inkling that God is doing something but we don’t see the effect yet, or the fruit. Maybe because he has just planted the seed.
Maybe he still has to nurture the soil of our hearts for the light he wants to grow in us to sprout and thrive. So he waits for the right time and then sows a seed of the light, a beginning.
And possibly he sows a seed of gladness in a sad heart. Maybe that is what this particular breed of joy needs to flourish in God’s garden.
Plants vary. They thrive or languish depending on the condition of the soil, the amount of sunlight and rain, the attention to cultivation and the extraction of weeds …
Light is sown like seed for the righteous.
Maybe what God wants me to see, to cling to as his forever truth, maybe that seed doesn’t grow in my heart until there is an extended time of cultivation, breaking up the ground, softening the hard clods and fashioning the ground in just the right way, having just the right amount of soil and nutrients surrounding the seed.
I love it when other people swing open a door to God’s truth for me, when I see their love and devotion to Christ yield fruit from their time in reading and receiving his words. Especially great when my lesson from God comes from my best friend. 🙂
- Another thought that kind of just rode in on the wave …
Sometimes God does this and sometimes God does that. “Sometimes” is all about God’s sovereignty. We don’t instruct God. We can’t guess his plan. We have a stirring in our hearts as God has planted a seed. When we plant a garden, we plant specific things. In fact we sometimes place the seed packets on sticks at the end of a row so we can remember what we planted.
But when God plants things in our gardens, we don’t know sometimes what God is growing. We want him to make happy soil in our lives and then plant gladness. We want him to explain everything and expose all the secrets and then plant seeds of light.
But God is God.
What we can know is that he will plant light, he will plant gladness, and we are to be glad and thankful for his work in our lives.
Amen, Lord. And thank you for planting your good things in one such as me.
