Fall puts an interesting spin on summertime gardens. As the lush greens begin to fade, and the flowers become spindly trying to eek out one more perfect bloom, the continuity, or as some like to call it, the “flow and ebb” of the garden is visibly interrupted and turned into something lacking in uniformity and peace-filling symmetry. Usually this time of year finds me trimming and cutting and pulling and such, trying to maintain some sort of control over an ultimately failing Southern Living cover dream, but not this year. This year, I let it go. I decided to watch and see what would naturally happen without my hands interrupting. And oh, the beauty! And the bounty! And the splendor found when looking purposefully beyond the apparent.
Isn’t that how God sees us? Up close and personal, beyond the apparent mess? He looks past all the scraggly stuff, the fading things and the heap of tangled limbs and twigs, and sees the beautiful, intimate parts of who we are. That’s what Jesus Christ does for us. Because of Him, God is able to see the most amazing, beautiful pieces of us. He doesn’t see the chaos. He doesn’t see the askew. He sees us, His perfect creation, in all the splendor He created us with. Without Jesus, God couldn’t look upon us and see us as unblemished and blameless. But because of Jesus, God sees us up close. He sees our most intimate selves, our true selves, and finds that in our season of change, we are more beautiful than ever. We’ve sprung forth from the ashes, grown under the Son, set seed in fertile ground and are fading…but only for a moment. Thank you, Jesus!
This scraggly looking bush…
houses these delicate little flowers within.
This carpet of weedy stuff (amaranth)…
looks like this, up close.
The furmosa lily is way beyond the beautiful show of pure white flowers, but it’s seed pods hold the promise of new life in the next season.
the toenail 