Back to Life

I am not a gardener. I do however love flowers. One of my favorite features of my home is the large front window looking out onto bountiful hydrangeas. In fact, if you look there today, you will see lush bushes covered with flowers almost ready to blossom.

My hydrangeas have not only provided me with a beautiful view, they have also served as a visual lesson on the goodness of God. The first winter I lived in my house I realized I probably needed to deadhead the plants, so I did a little reading. From the article I looked at, I understood that the best practice was to cut off the dead blooms in order to prepare for the plant’s next life cycle, so that is what I did.

Last year when late spring came and my bushes sprang to life they seemed less full and a little behind the timing from the previous spring. So as this winter rolled around, I realized I should take better care of my plants and decided to do a little more research. I found there was one important factor I had overlooked the previous year – different types of hydrangea bushes require different types of care. I went on to learn that my particular type of bush blooms on old wood, which basically means that the following year’s buds form in late summer or early fall.

Due to my lack of gardening skills, it turns out while I thought I was simply cutting off dead blooms, I was actually cutting off the future blooms as well. A plant that looked completely dead contained life. The old wood was preparing to produce new wood, new leaves, and new flowers.

Looking at the abundance of flowers right outside my window is a living picture of how things that are seemingly dead often contain life. Most of the time we don’t realize our future is being formed in the winter season. Often we just see the pain and hardship and want to cut it out of our lives, but in that very same place God is generating new life.

Do you remember what we have been learning from the book of Joel? The people of God had experienced devastation through locust infestation after locust infestation. The land was destroyed and the people were broken. It appeared they had nothing left and that God had abandoned them. Joel describes the situation using words such as stripped bare, ruined, dried up, and cast away. In response to this tragedy, Joel urges God’s people to lament and cry out to God. He knows the only solution is for the people to turn back to God.

Listen to how Joel describes God’s response, “Behold, I am going to send you grain, new wine and oil, and you will be satisfied in full with them and I will never again make you a reproach among the nations.” (Joel 2:19) In the place of devastation and emptiness, God would breath new life. Now Joel uses a different set of words to describe the people’s situation – full, overflowing, plenty, and satisfied.

We don’t know exactly what the people of Joel’s day were thinking, but I would imagine many of them had lost hope and could see no future. And I would imagine many of you feel that way too. It is easy to look at a situation, relationship, or even your own life and see no future, no purpose, and no way forward. However, in these circumstances that are beyond our ability to repair or change, God can breathe new life.

One of my favorite parts of book of Joel is when God promises, “I will make up for you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you. You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you; then My people will never be put to shame.” (Joel 2:25-26)

I remember a leader in a ministry where I served talking about the sacrifice of serving Jesus and saying, “God will always more than make it up to you.” You see, there is no pain that God does not see. No sacrifice that He doesn’t understand. No choice you make or devastation you face that can place you outside of His care.

If I am not careful, just like with my hydrangea bush, my vision will be so consumed with the challenges of today that I will miss seeing the promises of tomorrow. I need to take a lesson from the prophet Joel – my God can bring life from death, He can take what is broken and restore it, and He can take devastation and turn it to hope.